topic Re: Build and zip in Developer Q&A Forum

Build and zip

MW_ErikPost — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 13:45:38 GMT

Hello everyone,

According to the Dynatrace Docs(https://developer.dynatrace.com/plan/platform-services/app-engine/) the preferred way to create an app bundle (zip) that can be uploaded in an environment is to use the dt-app toolkit.

But when I use npx dt-app build it will create a /dist folder with files but not a zip folder.
If I zip the /dist folder it will not allow me to upload the custom app complaining about missing files.

If I use npx dt-app deploy it will deploy to my environment as expected but this also does not create a distributable zip file.

What is the preferred way to create a distributable zip file?

Kind regards,

Erik

Re: Build and zip

dani_coll — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 14:40:01 GMT

Hi MW_ErikPost,

You need to execute npx dt-app deploy --dry-run which will create a folder called out, with the artifact zipped.

The dist folder that comes from the dt-app build command by itself is not enough for deploying the app since you are missing key metadata files like the app.config.json.

The documentation states how the dt-app deploy command works under the hood, which is the one zipping the needed files to be able to upload them through the API. However, as a user you don't keep that zip file unless you use the --dry-run parameter.

Re: Build and zip

MW_ErikPost — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 15:00:01 GMT

Thanks Dani,

That indeed seems to work. I do not see it stated anywhere in the documentation, might be worth to add this to here: https://developer.dynatrace.com/quickstart/app-toolkit/#deploy and to the command help as well.