stackmanager 0.5

Utility to manage CloudFormation stacks using YAML configuration file

Stack-Manager

Utility to manage CloudFormation stacks based upon a Template (either local or in S3) and a YAML configuration file.

Uses ChangeSets to create or update CloudFormation stacks, allowing the ChangeSets to either be automatically applied or applied later (e.g. during a later phase of a build pipeline after review of the ChangeSet).

Configuration

The configuration file can either be a single YAML document containing the configuration for a stack for a specific environment and region, or can contain multiple documents for different deployments of that stack to different environments and regions.

Single Environment

The configuration combines together the different values that are typically passed to the CloudFormation command line when creating or updating a CloudFormation stack.

Environment: dev
StackName: "{{ Environment }}-StackManager-Integration"
Region: us-east-1
Parameters:
  Environment: "{{ Environment }}"
Tags:
  Application: StackManager
  Environment: "{{ Environment }}"
Template: integration/template.yaml
Capabilities:
  - CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

The configuration file makes use of Jinja2 templating to perform replacements into the StackName, Parameters and Tags values using the Environment and Region values.

It's also possible to make use of Jinja2 filters, for example to lowercase the Environment to pass into a parameter that is going to be used where it's required to be lowercase (e.g. in forming a bucket name):

Parameters:
  LowerEnvironment: "{{ Environment|lower() }}" 

There is not currently support for defining and substituting arbitrary values.

Multiple Environments

---
Environment: all
StackName: "{{ Environment }}-StackManager-Integration-{{ Region }}"
Parameters:
  Environment: "{{ Environment }}"
Tags:
  Application: StackManager
  Environment: "{{ Environment }}"
Template: integration/template.yaml
---
Environment: dev
Region: us-east-1
---
Environment: dev
Region: us-east-2
---
Environment: prod
Region: us-east-1
Tags:
  CostCenter: 200
---
Environment: prod
Region: us-east-2
Tags:
  CostCenter: 300

A multi-environment configuration can be used to combine all the configurations for different versions of a stack across environments and regions, using inheritance from a specially named all Environment to avoid the need to repeat values.

Because of the special handling of the all Environment, it's not possible to deploy an environment named all.

Supported Configuration Values

Name	Required	Templated	Notes
Environment	Yes	No	Name of environment to be deployed
Region	Yes	No	AWS region (e.g. us-east-1) - not required for the 'all' environment
Parameters	No	Yes	Each parameter value is templated, and parameters are inherited from 'all'
Tags	No	Yes	Each tag value is templated, and tags are inherited from 'all'
Capabilities	No	No	List of capabilities (e.g. CAPABILITY_IAM)
Template	No	No	Can be supplied on command line, so not required in configuration

Usage

Stackmanager has the following commands:

• deploy - Create or update a CloudFormation stack for a specific environment/region using a ChangeSet. By default exits after creating the changeset, but can --auto-apply.
• apply - Apply a previously created ChangeSet
• delete - Delete an existing CloudFormation stack
• upload - Uploads a local file to S3. Utility method to prevent the need to use the AWS CLI or other tools.

deploy

Usage: stackmanager deploy [OPTIONS]

  Create or update a CloudFormation stack using ChangeSets.

Options:
  -p, --profile TEXT      AWS Profile, will use default or environment
                          variables if not specified

  -c, --config TEXT       YAML Configuration file  [required]
  -e, --environment TEXT  Environment to deploy  [required]
  -r, --region TEXT       AWS Region to deploy  [required]
  -t, --template TEXT     Override template
  --parameter TEXT...     Override a parameter, can be specified multiple
                          times

  --change-set-name TEXT  Custom ChangeSet name
  --auto-apply            Automatically apply created ChangeSet
  --help                  Show this message and exit.

apply

Usage: stackmanager apply [OPTIONS]

  Apply a CloudFormation ChangeSet to create or update a CloudFormation
  stack.

Options:
  -p, --profile TEXT      AWS Profile, will use default or environment
                          variables if not specified

  -c, --config TEXT       YAML Configuration file  [required]
  -e, --environment TEXT  Environment to deploy  [required]
  -r, --region TEXT       AWS Region to deploy  [required]
  --change-set-name TEXT  ChangeSet to apply  [required]
  --help                  Show this message and exit.

delete

Usage: stackmanager delete [OPTIONS]

  Delete a CloudFormation stack.

Options:
  -p, --profile TEXT       AWS Profile, will use default or environment
                           variables if not specified

  -c, --config TEXT        YAML Configuration file  [required]
  -e, --environment TEXT   Environment to deploy  [required]
  -r, --region TEXT        AWS Region to deploy  [required]
  --retain-resources TEXT  Logical Ids of resources to retain
  --help                   Show this message and exit.

Upload

Usage: stackmanager upload [OPTIONS]

  Uploads a File to S3. This might be a large CloudFormation template, or a
  Lambda zip file

Options:
  -p, --profile TEXT   AWS Profile, will use default or environment variables
                       if not specified

  -r, --region TEXT    AWS Region to upload to  [required]
  -f, --filename TEXT  File to upload  [required]
  -b, --bucket TEXT    Bucket to upload to  [required]
  -k, --key TEXT       Key to upload to  [required]
  --help               Show this message and exit.

CI/CD Pipeline support

Azure DevOps

Stackmanager will automatically detect when it is running in an Azure DevOps pipeline by looking for the SYSTEM_TEAMPROJECTID environment variable.

It will print ##vso strings under the following circumstances:

• deploy has created a ChangeSet and it has not been auto-applied:
  This sets a variable named change_set_name containing the change_set_name that can be used with the apply command in a later step/job/stage.
  The name of the variable can be overridden by setting the CHANGE_SET_VARIABLE environment variable.
• deploy has created a ChangeSet but it contains no changes:
  This logs a warning (##vso[task.logissue]) and sets the status to SucceededWithIssues (##vso[task.complete]) allowing following steps/jobs/stages to be skipped by checking for the SucceededStatus in a condition.
• deploy or apply fails when applying a ChangeSet:
  This logs an error (##vso[task.logissue])