AWS CodeBuild Run Build for GitHub Actions

This action runs a AWS CodeBuild project as a step in a GitHub Actions workflow job.

The action builds the CodeBuild project, collects the build logs, and prints them as they are written. The user experience is the same as it would be if the logic were executed in the GitHub Actions job runner.

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Usage

Inputs

This action offers three inputs that you can use to configure its behavior. The only required input is project-name.

1. project-name (required) : The name of CodeBuild project you want to run.

2. buildspec-override (optional) : The location (in this repository) of the buildspec file that CodeBuild requires. By default, the action uses the buildspec file location that you configured in the CodeBuild project.

3. compute-type-override (optional) : The name of a compute type for this build that overrides the one specified in the build project.

4. environment-type-override (optional) : A container type for this build that overrides the one specified in the build project.

5. image-override (optional) : The name of an image for this build that overrides the one specified in the build project.

6. env-vars-for-codebuild (optional) : A comma-separated list of the names of environment variables that the action passes from GitHub Actions to CodeBuild.

   The action passes these environment variables to CodeBuild along with any environment variables that have a github prefix.

   This list is often the same or a subset of the list of environment variables that you define for GitHub actions in the env property.

   Note: If you specify an environment variable with the same name as one defined in your CodeBuild project, the one defined here replaces the one in the CodeBuild project. For a list of CodeBuild environment variables, see

Outputs

1. aws-build-id : The CodeBuild build ID of the build that the action ran.

Purpose

This action is designed to give you the power of GitHub Actions with options available in AWS CodeBuild for more CPU and memory, and access to other resources.

GitHub Actions provides a powerful system of event-based workflows, but the hosted job runners cannot exceed the defined computing and memory limits, and might prevent you from accessing resources that you need for your project.

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed continuous integration service that can compile source code, run tests, and produce software packages that are ready to deploy. It supports more environment options than standard GitHub Actions, including a selection of powerful computing environments with additional memory.

Resources and Architecture

GitHub Actions job runners have 2 x86_64 CPU cores and 7 GB RAM.

This is enough for the most common activities, but some large or complex builds need more resources, and some builds need access to special CPU architectures or hardware.

CodeBuild compute types offer options including:

• up to 72 x86_64 vCPUs
• up to 255 GB RAM
• up to 8 ARM64 vCPUs
• GPU hardware devices

Access

Your workflow might require access to assets, configuration, or resources that are impossible, difficult, or simply expensive to access from GitHub's hosted job runners but are easy or cheap to access from CodeBuild.

Credentials and Permissions

In order for the action to run your CodeBuild project, you need to provide AWS credentials. We recommend using aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials to configure your credentials for a job.

NOTE: GitHub Secrets are not passed to the runner when a workflow is triggered from a forked repository. This means that you cannot use this action directly in a workflow that is triggered by pull requests from a fork. See the GitHub Secrets docs for more information.

The credentials that you provide need to have the following permissions:

• codebuild:StartBuild
• codebuild:BatchGetBuilds
• logs:GetLogEvents

For example:

{
  "Version": "2012-10-17",
  "Statement": [
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["codebuild:StartBuild", "codebuild:BatchGetBuilds"],
      "Resource": ["arn:aws:codebuild:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:project/PROJECT_NAME"]
    },
    {
      "Effect": "Allow",
      "Action": ["logs:GetLogEvents"],
      "Resource": [
        "arn:aws:logs:REGION:ACCOUNT_ID:log-group:/aws/codebuild/PROJECT_NAME:*"
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Examples

These examples show how you can define a step in a workflow job. For more information about GitHub Actions workflow syntax, see the GitHub docs.

If your CodeBuild project is already configured the way you want it, the only CodeBuild Run input you need to provide is the project name.

- name: Configure AWS Credentials
  uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1
  with:
    aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
    aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
    aws-region: us-east-2
- name: Run CodeBuild
  uses: aws-actions/aws-codebuild-run-build@v1
  with:
    project-name: CodeBuildProjectName

If you reuse a project in multiple jobs or repositories, you might want to provide a bit more configuration. For example, the following configuration specifies an alternate location for the buildspec file. It also tells AWS CodeBuild Run Build to send all of the environment variables defined in the env: list to CodeBuild. If any of these environment variables are defined in the CodeBuild project, this will overwrite them.

- name: Configure AWS Credentials
  uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v1
  with:
    aws-access-key-id: ${{ secrets.AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID }}
    aws-secret-access-key: ${{ secrets.AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY }}
    aws-region: us-east-2
- name: Run CodeBuild
  uses: aws-actions/aws-codebuild-run-build@v1
  with:
    project-name: CodeBuildProjectName
    buildspec-override: path/to/buildspec.yaml
    compute-type-override: compute-type
    environment-type-override: environment-type
    image-override: ecr-image-uri
    env-vars-for-codebuild: |
      custom,
      requester,
      event-name
  env:
    custom: my environment variable
    requester: ${{ github.actor }}
    event-name: ${{ github.event_name }}

Running Locally

It can be useful to run a build outside of CI. So, this action can also be installed locally to kick off a CodeBuild project from your git sandbox. You could push your changes to an open PR, but if you only want to test one project this may be faster. In order to use this tool, you must first git checkout the commit that you want to test.

npx @aws-actions/codebuild-run-build -p ProjectName -r remoteName

This will use whatever commit you have checked out and push to a temporary branch in the specified remote. Then kick off the build and delete the remote branch when complete.

You can also install the project globally or locally and execute it that way.

Implementation Notes

What we did

We call the CodeBuild StartBuild API, checking out the commit that triggered the workflow.

The action waits for the build to complete while logging everything written to the build's Amazon CloudWatch Logs logstream. If the buildStatus value in the StartBuild response is SUCCEEDED, the action succeeds. Otherwise, it fails.

In the call to StartBuild, we pass in all GITHUB_ environment variables in the GitHub Actions environment, plus any environment variables that you specified in the evn-passthrough input value.

Regardless of the project configuration in CodeBuild or GitHub Actions, we always pass the following parameters and values to CodeBuild in the StartBuild API call.

CodeBuild value	GitHub value
sourceVersion	The commit that triggered the workflow
sourceTypeOverride	The string 'GITHUB'
sourceLocationOverride	The HTTPS git url for context.repo

What we did not do

This action intentionally does not let you specify every option in the CodeBuild::StartBuild API.

Because all GitHub Actions input values are passed through environment variables, they must be simple strings. This makes it difficult to pass complex structures as inputs.

Also, providing an input for every parameter in the StartBuild API would have made it much more difficult to use and maintain this tool. We would have to add many more inputs or require string values, while hoping that all supported configurations conformed to the environment variable length limits.

For this reason, and to simplify what we expect to be the most common use-cases, we chose to start with the simplest possible configuration. If you find that these options don't meet your needs, please open an issue to let us know.

License

This SDK is distributed under the Apache License, Version 2.0, see LICENSE and NOTICE for more information.