AWS CodeStar – Quickly develop, build, and deploy applications on AWS

AWS CodeStar is a new service that changes the way development teams deliver software in AWS. CodeStar makes the process of setting up software applications for continuous delivery easier to manage through integrated authorization and access management, centralized member collaboration, and automated environment provisioning.

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(1) “Working with AWS CodeStar Teams.” Working with AWS CodeStar Teams – AWS CodeStar. Amazon Web Services, 2017. Web. 01 May 2017. – http://docs.aws.amazon.com/codestar/latest/userguide/working-with-teams.html

Through the use of CodeStar you can now automatically create entire environments for your application and all of its associated AWS resources. Furthermore, CodeStar is great for groups who are engaging in brand new start up applications and projects. Because of the simplicity of CodeStar, development teams can create efficient software workflows that will be able to build, test, and release software on AWS much faster than before. Some of the benefits of CodeStar include:

• Automatic Provisioning of Resources: When you create a project through CodeStar, AWS will automatically provision a handful of the underlying resources that will be part of your software’s environment through the use of AWS CloudFormation. Some of these resources could include AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS EC2 instances, AWS S3 Buckets, and an AWS CodeCommit repository. One of the most significant resources that CodeStar creates is a continuous delivery pipeline. This pipeline is built using AWS CodePipeline and initially contains two stages: a Source (Commit) stage and an Application (Deploy) stage. If you need additional stages, you can modify your CodePipeline pipeline accordingly.
• Pre-built Code Templates: When you begin the process of creating a project with CodeStar you are given the option to choose from many pre-built code templates used to build applications that will run on AWS Elastic Beanstalk, AWS EC2, or AWS Lambda. These pre-built templates come with already-setup sample code applications that are ready to be modified and as the user you can choose between five programming languages to build your software in. These five languages include Ruby, Python, PHP, Java, and Javascript. After you choose your programming language you then have the option to choose from three ways of editing your project code which include the use of Visual Studio, Eclipse, or Command Line Tools.

For the remainder of this blog I will demonstrate how to setup and build a CodeStar project using a Ruby on Rails template and will deploy the sample application on an AWS EC2 instance.

CodeStar Project with Ruby on Rails

Creating your CodeStar Project

1. The first thing you will need to do to create your CodeStar project is to log into your AWS console, go to the CodeStar console, and select “Create New Project”.
2. You will be directed to a page that displays the many variety of project templates for you to choose from. The types of  applications this service supports range from templates ready to deploy on:
   1. AWS Elastic Beanstalk (Automated management of capacity and load balancing), Amazon EC2 with AWS CodeDeploy (Flexible deployment onto any type of instance), and AWS Lambda (Lambda is serverless technology and uses AWS CodeBuild to build your artifacts automatically)
      1. Side note: As of now it is not possible to create a CodeStar project via a CloudFormation template. It is also not possible to start a CodeStar project with your already-built application or to use GitHub as your code repository. The only way to achieve this would be to modify the Source stage of the CodePipeline that gets created for you once it is complete.
   2. For my example I am going to choose the “Ruby on Rails Web Application” that will be running on an Amazon EC2 instance.

3. You will then be prompted to enter in the name for your project (Project name) and will be able to edit the Project ID as well. You can also choose whether or not to allow AWS CodeStar to administer AWS resources on your behalf by either checking/unchecking the box on the bottom of the page. If you chose a template that has a project running on EC2 (such as my example) then you will be able to edit the EC2 configuration as well. This includes choosing:

1. Your own VPC (you have the choice of being assigned a default VPC and Subnet or choosing an existing one. You cannot create a VPC here.)
   1. Side note: To create an AWS VPC and a subnet you must go into the Networking & Content Delivery Console: VPC section and create them.
2. Your Subnet to deploy your instance into
3. The instance type (I chose t2.micro) 

4. Select your AWS EC2 Keypair and select “Create Project”
5. You will then be able to choose how you want to edit your project code from the following three choices (Visual Studio, Eclipse, or Command line tools). For my example I chose Command line tools. At the bottom of the page will also be the code repository URL for your project and you can choose an access method between SSH and HTTPS.
6. The next page will be the Connect to your tools page which is where you’ll select your local machine’s operating system (macOS, Windows, Linux) and your connection method (HTTPS, SSH).

1. For HTTPS connection: If you haven’t done so already you will need to install a Git client on your local machine (there is a link to install it in Step 1). You will also need to generate your AWS IAM user Git credentials by clicking the “here” link in Step 2. Once you have completed the first two steps you can then clone your repository onto your local machine by copying the Git command in Step 3 and pasting it to whatever directory you would like in your terminal.  Once you  have cloned the git repository into  your terminal you will be prompted for your user name and password which will be the Git credentials that you generate for your IAM user. Hit the “Skip” button below to continue onto your management dashboard
2. For SSH connection: If you haven’t done so already you will need to install a Git client on your local machine (there is a link to install it in Step 1). You will then need to register your SSH Public Key (for help on how to do this please go to this link here located in the instructions in Step 2). Once you have registered your SSH key you will need to go into your terminal into your ~/.ssh directory and create a file named “config”. Add the following lines into this file:
   

Host git-codecommit.*.amazonaws.com
User Your-IAM-SSH-Key-ID-Here
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/Your-Private-Key-File-Name-Here

Once you have saved the file, you will need to ensure it has the right permissions by running the following command in your ~/.ssh directory:

chmod 600 config

After you have followed these steps you can clone the project repository onto your local machine by copying and pasting the command located in Step 4.
As mentioned earlier in this article, when you go through the process of creating your CodeStar project, if you selected the box that “allows AWS to administer resources on your behalf” CodeStar creates a CloudFormation stack that automatically deploys the environment and resources for your application. Here is what the CloudFormation stack and its resources looks like if you chose to create the Ruby on Rails application on an EC2 instance:

Pre-configured Management Dashboard

After you have created your CodeStar project  you will be given a pre-configured centralized management dashboard from which you will be able to view a variety of events that are going on with your application project. Things that are viewable in the default dashboard include your:

• Application’s resource activity metrics via AWS CloudWatch
• Code commits history
• Your application’s endpoint (Outlined in red: my example contains a public EC2 DNS endpoint)
• A visual of your AWS CodePipeline in which you can see real time progress of your software’s continuous delivery cycle.
• You also have the option to add the Atlassian Jira Software extension to your dashboard so that you can directly track your application project’s issues and its collaborator’s tasks

From the dashboard you can Configure issue tracking which enables to integrate the Jira extension into your project for easy tracking. You are also able to setup your team members who will be given access to work on your project and determine which role they will have on it. You will just have to pick their IAM user name, choose whether remote access is allowed, and select the role for them between:

• Viewer
• Contributer
• Owner

Start Modifying Your Rails Application

For this example I will be opening up my sample Rails application by going to the application endpoint link on the CodeStar dashboard. The first modification that I will be making will be to the opening “hello page” of the application. Here is what the opening page of the sample application looks like when I go to the application endpoint:

Assuming that you have cloned the Git repository for your project onto your local machine, you can now start to modify your Rails application and make changes using your own text editor. For this example I am just going to remove the links on the home page (/app/views/hello_page/hello.html.erb) and change some of the wording. After making my slight changes to the “hello page” and saving it, I can just into my Git repository on my local machine’s terminal and proceed to type the following commands to push my most recent changes:

git status

• This will show you what changes have been made to your project

git add app/views/hello_page/hello.html.erb

• This will add all of the changes that are ready to be made to the hello page

git commit -m “[your message about the changes that have been made]”

git push

• This will push your newly modified project into your code pipeline and will automatically trigger the continuous deployment cycle.

Here is what will happen to your CodePipeline on your dashboard when you “git push” your changes:

Once the pipeline has has succeeded through the Application stage, refresh your browser page with your application’s endpoint and see the new changes that have been made to your Rails application:

From here on out you have a full Ruby on Rails application framework running on an Amazon EC2 instance where you can start to build/modify your own custom application. For more information about what you can do with your new Rails application please refer to the README that can be accessed by clicking on the “Code” box on the left side of you CodeStar dashboard.

Additional Resources

Here are some additional resources you might find useful:

• AWS CodeStar Blog Announcement
• AWS CodeStar Product Details
• AWS CodeStar Main Page
• DevOps in AWS Radio: AWS CodeStar (Episode 7)

Summary

In this post we talked about how to use the newly added AWS CodeStar service and discovered the benefits that it can offer to a variety of users. You learned about the different types of projects that CodeStar can create and how to easily interact with those projects upon their creation.
Let us know if you have any comments or questions @stelligent or @TreyMcElhattan
Stelligent is hiring! Do you enjoy working on complex problems like figuring out ways to automate all the things as part of a deployment pipeline? Do you believe in the “one-button everything” mantra? If your skills and interests lie at the intersection of DevOps automation and the AWS cloud, check out the careers page on our website.

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