Simple GitHub Simulated Shell Build Simulated Deployment AWS CodePipeline Pipeline

Internal

• AWS CodePipeline Operations

Overview

This article documents an example of a simple pipeline that is created with a CloudFormation template, reads code from a GitHub repository, applies a trivial "build" transformation and "deploys" the final artifacts via a CloudFormation project-embedded stack.

Example

GitHub aws-release-pipeline

Prerequisites

• The example requires a GitHub repository to be available. We'll use https://github.com/ovidiuf/aws-pipeline-source-example. The repository contains buildspec metadata, that drives the build, and a CloudFormation stack template, which will drive the deployment.
• The CodeBuild, CodePipeline and CloudFormation service roles, required by the build service, which performs the build, the CloudFormation service, which performs the deployment, and CodePipeline service, which drives both of them, must be created in advanced and referred from the CloudFormation pipeline stack specification by their ARN, or by reference. I tried creating them as part of the same stack, but I got: "CodeBuild is not authorized to perform: sts:AssumeRole on ...". If they exist when the stack creation is attempted, it works. TODO: try to declare them in the same stack, experiment with dependencies, try to make this work.. An auxiliary CloudFormation stack that creates those roles is available here:

thalarion-release-pipeline-prerequisites.yml

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --stack-name thalarion-release-pipeline-prerequisites \
  --template-body file://./thalarion-release-pipeline-prerequisites.yml

Procedure

CodeFormation Release Pipeline Stack

The CodePipeline pipeline, the delegate CodeBuild project, the S3 bucket to keep the artifacts produced by the pipeline and the ECR repository that will hold images produced by the project will be created as part of one CodeFormation stack:

thalarion-release-pipeline.yml

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name thalarion-release-pipeline \
  --template-body file://.thalarion-release-pipeline.yml 
  --parameters ParameterKey=GitHubPersonalAccessCode,ParameterValue=...

Buildspec

The GitHub repository should expose a builspec.yml in root. A simple example is available here:

buildspec.yml Example

aws-release-pipeline example:

buildspec.yml

CloudFormation Deployment Stack Template

aws-release-pipeline example:

deployment-stack.yml

The GitHub repository should expose a CloudFormation deployment stack template, which will be used by CloudFormation in the "deploy" stage of the pipeline to perform the deployment. This is a simple example:

AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'

Description: "CloudFormation deployment template, will drive the deployment as part of this project's release pipeline."

Parameters:

  #
  # these must be set in the deployment stack configuration file, produced by a prior pipeline step, or by the "ParameterOverrides" configuration.
  #

  BuildBucket:
    Type: String

  MyConfigurationParameterA:
    Type: String

  MyConfigurationParameterB:
    Type: String

Resources:

  ServiceLogGroup:
    Type: AWS::Logs::LogGroup
    Properties:
      LogGroupName: !Sub '/playground/${MyConfigurationParameterA}-${MyConfigurationParameterB}'
      RetentionInDays: 1