aws-codebuild-docker-images VS cdk-codepipeline-flutter

Based on public repository for Codebuild Image, the image base will be the Ubuntu standard 7.0.

This is basically what CodeBuild does.

The default Docker containers that CodeBuild uses (you can create your own) and the shell script it uses to parse the yaml configuration file (mostly a list of shell scripts) are all open source and the entire process can be run locally.

https://github.com/aws/aws-codebuild-docker-images

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codebuild/latest/userguide/use-c...

Disclaimer: I work for AWS. But nowhere near the team that developed Firecracker

Disclaimer: I work for AWS in Professional Services. All opinions are my own.

The beauty about CodeBuild is that there is no “lock-in”. All it is fundamentally is a Linux or Windows Docker container with popular language runtimes and a shell script that processes a yaml file or you can supply your own Docker container.

You just put a bunch of bash commands or PowerShell commands in the yaml file and it runs anything.

The Docker container and the shell scripts are all open source and you can quite easily run them locally.

I could see outside of AWS keeping your Docker containers for your specific build environments in a local repository and doing all of your builds inside them using Jenkins.

https://github.com/aws/aws-codebuild-docker-images

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codebuild/latest/userguide/use-c...

For a “batteries included” approach though, I really like Azure DevOps Pipelines.

I’ve even done a couple of integrations between Azure DevOps and AWS when we had clients that are Microsoft shops.

https://aws.amazon.com/vsts/

For AWS, if you use CodeCommit (AWS git service), all access is via IAM and granular permissions. If you integrate with Azure DevOps, the AWS credentials do have to be stored in a separate MS hosted credential storage.

CodeBuild also supports at least Github natively.

I’m not shilling for AWS. I have an MS development background (.Net) and only have “DevOps” experience using AWS and Microsoft tooling.

Docker Images provided by the CodeBuild team should be updated regularly and should support all "modern" toolkits. The open source project has some activity, but an issue for supporting newer Android versions is now open for some time...

The runtimes available and exposed by CodePipeline support Android runtime 29 – and the Docker images are provisioned using Java 8. Unfortunately, as of July 2021, the Android gradle tools (used by Flutter) require Java 11. I have created an issue in the corresponding Github (see here) but needed to find a workaround to move on – I think I’ve found one, but I hope that anyone reading this might have a better way or idea?

$ git clone https://github.com/aws/aws-codebuild-docker-images.git $ cd aws-codebuild-docker-images/al2/aarch64/standard/2.0 $ docker build -t codebuild/amazonlinux2-aarch64-standard:2.0 .

This also is the place where we specify this is an AArch64 build. The managed image indicates to use a standard image provided by AWS. The source of the Graviton2 image can be found on GitHub.

🏗 AWS CodeBuild Local Builds - Simulate a CodeBuild environment locally to quickly troubleshoot the commands and settings located in the BuildSpec file.

I've been able to gain some experience with the tools while working on a few projects, including cdk-codepipeline-flutter and here is a list of things that I believe could be improved. My main focus here is on CodePipeline, as it serves as the glue between all of the other tools.

In this post, we are going to expand our existing project on Github to be able to build an “apk” file for Android and a zip file for iOS. Before I can show you how this is possible, let’s start with some challenges that I’ve faced 🙂

This is the definition of the CI/CD pipeline, it uses our Github repository as the source of the code and automatically starts after a push to the repository on the main branch. The “Flutter Build Stage” is the one that currently builds the Flutter web application, deploys it and makes it available to the end user. Going forward, to make best use of Flutter, we would need to expand this stage to also be able to build an iOS application, an android application or an application for any other platform supported by Flutter. As a “goal” I would personally also want to extend this stage to be able to publish the apps to the corresponding stores (App Store, Play Store, Windows Store, …) – Thanks to my friends at cosee for the help and guidance around this process!