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AWS CodeBuild

Updated Jul 26, 2020 ·
NOTES

This is not an exhaustive documentation of all the existing AWS Services. These are summarized notes that I used for the AWS Certifications.

To see the complete documentation, please go to: AWS documentation

Overview​

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles source code, runs tests, and produces ready-to-deploy software packages.

  • Alternative to other build tools such as Jenkins.
  • Continuous scaling (no servers to manage or provision – no build queue).
  • Pay for usage: the time it takes to complete the builds.
  • Leverages Docker under the hood for reproducible builds.
  • Possibility to extend capabilities leveraging our own base Docker images.
  • Secure: Integration with KMS for encryption of build artifacts, IAM for build permissions, and VPC for network security, CloudTrail for API calls logging.

Features:

  • Source Code from GitHub / CodeCommit / CodePipeline / S3...
  • Build instructions can be defined in code, define in a buildspec.yml file.
  • Output logs to Amazon S3 & AWS CloudWatch Logs.
  • Metrics to monitor CodeBuild statistics.
  • Use CloudWatch Events to detect failed builds and trigger notifications.
  • Use CloudWatch Alarms to notify if you need “thresholds” for failures.
  • CloudWatch Events / AWS Lambda as a Glue.
  • SNS notifications
  • Ability to reproduce CodeBuild locally to troubleshoot in case of errors.
  • Pipelines can be defined within CodePipeline or CodeBuild itself.

CodeBuild Supported Environments​

  • Java
  • Ruby
  • Python
  • Go
  • Node.js
  • Android
  • .NET Core
  • PHP
  • Docker: extend any environment we like

How does CodeBuild work?​

How it works:

  • Two ways to run CodeBuild:
    • Source Code
      • buildspec.yml
    • By building a Docker image
      • AWS Managed or Custom
  • A CodeBuild Container is created.
  • We can add an optional S3 Cache bucket
  • Cache while We do multiple builds:
    • dependencies
    • artifacts
  • Output to an S3 bucket.
  • Save logs using CloudWatch or S3.

CodeBuild BuildSpec​

  • buildspec.yml file must be at the root of your code.
  • Define environment variables:
    • Plaintext variables
    • Secure secrets: use SSM Parameter store

Phases (specify commands to run):

  • Install: install dependencies we may need for your build.
  • Pre build: final commands to execute before build.
  • Build: actual build commands.
  • Post build: finishing touches (zip output for example).

Post-build:

  • Artifacts: What to upload to S3 (encrypted with KMS)
  • Cache: Files to cache (usually dependencies) to S3 for future build speedup

CodeBuild Local Build​