AWS CodePipeline Concepts

External

• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/concepts.html
• CreatePipeline API Request Reference

Internal

• AWS CodePipeline

CodePipeline as AWS Service

CodePipeline is an AWS service, named "codepipeline.amazonaws.com".

Pipeline

Pipeline Structure

Created the following CloudFormation sequence:

Resources:
  Pipeline:
    Type: AWS::CodePipeline::Pipeline
    Properties:
      RoleArn: 'arn:aws:iam::777777777777:role/CodePipelineServiceRole-1'
      ArtifactStore
        Type: 'S3'
        Location: 'experimental-s3-bucket-for-codepipeline'
      ...
  Stages:
    ...

Required configuration properties are:

RoleArn

Specifies a service role that allows the codepipeline service to execute various actions required by pipeline operations.

ArtifactStore

Typically, an Amazon S3 bucket to store code pipeline artifacts. "Location" should be set to the name of the bucket. A directory with the same name as the pipeline will be create in the bucket. Sub-directories corresponding to various input and output artifacts will be also created.

Stage

A must have at least 2 stages, one-stage pipeline will be considered invalid.

Action

An action is a task performed on an artifact, executed as part of the sequence in the stage of a pipeline. The action may occur in a specified order, or in parallel, depending on their configuration.

Syntactic and semantic details about actions can be found in:

ActionDeclaration

Action Specification

Action Name

An action name must match the regular expression pattern: [A-Za-z0-9.@\-_]+ Cannot contain spaces.

Action Type ID

ActionTypeId

Input Artifacts

InputArtifact

A list of input "artifacts", that actually correspond to names of sub-directories in the artifact store, into a directory named after the pipeline physical ID. The list may be empty.

Output Artifacts

A list of output "artifacts", that actually correspond to sub-directories in the artifact store, into a directory named after the pipeline physical ID. The list may be empty.

Action Types

Currently, six types of actions are supported:

• Source
• Build
• Test
• Deploy
• Approval
• Invoke

Custom actions can also be developed.

Source

Source Action Integrations

Resources:
  MyPipeline:
    Type: AWS::CodePipeline::Pipeline
    Properties:
      ...
      Stages:
        - Name: Source
          Actions:
          - Name: !Sub 'source-action-${GitHubRepositoryName}-${Branch}'
            ActionTypeId:
              Category: Source
              Owner: ThirdParty
              Version: '1'
              Provider: GitHub
            InputArtifacts: []
            OutputArtifacts:
            - Name: 'sources'
            Configuration:
              Owner: 'novaordis-llc'
              Repo: !Ref GitHubRepositoryName
              Branch: !Ref Branch
              OAuthToken: ...
            RunOrder: 1

GitHub Authentication

GitHub Authentication for AWS CodePipeline

Source Action Execution Mechanics

The action provider (GitHub) performs a repository clone and packages the content as a ZIP file in the artifact store, which in most cases is an S3 bucket. The ZIP file is placed into a <pipeline-physical-ID>/<SourceOutputArtifacts.Name>.

Build

External

• Build Action Integration
• Add an AWS CodeBuild Build Action to a Pipeline
• Use CodePipeline with AWS CodeBuild to Test Code and Run Builds

CodeBuild can be added as a build action to the build stage of the pipeline. Existing build projects can be used, or new ones can be created in the CodePipeline console.

Resources:
  MyPipeline:
    Type: AWS::CodePipeline::Pipeline
    Properties:
      ...
      Stages:
        ...
        - Name: Build
          Actions:
          - Name: !Sub 'CodeBuild build driven by ${Buildspec}'
            ActionTypeId:
              Category: Build
              Owner: AWS
              Version: '1'
              Provider: CodeBuild
            InputArtifacts:
              - Name: 'sources'
            OutputArtifacts:
              - Name: 'build-files'
            Configuration:
              ProjectName: !Ref CodeBuildProject
            RunOrder: 1

CodePipeline-Driven CodeBuild Builds

CodePipeline-Driven CodeBuild Builds

Deploy

Resources:
  MyPipeline:
    Type: AWS::CodePipeline::Pipeline
    Properties:
      ...
      Stages:
        ...
        - Name: Deploy
          Actions:
            - Name: Deploy
              ActionTypeId:
                Category: Deploy
                Owner: AWS
                Version: '1'
                Provider: CloudFormation
              InputArtifacts:
                - Name: ContainerSrc
                - Name: ContainerBuild
              Configuration:
                StackName: !Join ['-', [!Sub '${AWS::Region}', !Join ['-', !Split ['.', !Ref GitHubRepositoryName]], 'deploy']]
                ActionMode: CREATE_UPDATE
                Capabilities: CAPABILITY_IAM
                TemplatePath: !Sub ContainerSrc::${SvcTemplate}
                TemplateConfiguration: ContainerBuild::overrides.json
                ParameterOverrides: !Sub '{ "ECRRepository": "${ECRRepository}", "EnvironmentName": "${CFEnvironment}", "Image": "${AWS::AccountId}.dkr.ecr.${AWS::Region}.amazonaws.com/${ECRRepository}", "DeploymentStackName": "${DeploymentStackName}", "GitHubRepo": "${GitHubRepositoryName}" }'
                RoleArn:
                  Fn::ImportValue: !Sub '${AWS::Region}-CloudFormationDeploymentRole'
              OutputArtifacts: []
              RunOrder: 1

Notes to organize:

• The parameters specified in the "ParameterOverrides" must match with the sub-template parameters.
• If "override.json" is declared as "TemplateConfiguration" and the previous build task does not create the override.json file, the deployment stage will fail with an S3 error.