Select existing ECR image for deploy

[VaZark]

I'm currently using python 3.11 as the base docker image for my projects. Since the platform is not yet supported on AWS, I need to build the container to run the tests.

I'd like to be able to use copilot pipeline to,

1. Build the container
2. Run the tests
3. Push this image to ECR , if tests pass
4. Use the latest image from ECR to deploy to Fargate

The autogenerated copilot pipeline seems to use the cli deploy and I've not been able to find a flag to identify and select an image to deploy.

Am I missing anything ? Is this feasible?

[paragbhingre]

@VaZark, I have a few questions to help me better understand your scenario.

Since the platform is not yet supported on AWS

Which platform are you referring to here?

The autogenerated copilot pipeline seems to use the cli deploy

What does cli deploy means here?

Copilot pipelines use CodeBuild for the build stage, and CloudFormation for the deploy stage.

[paragbhingre]

@VaZark May I know the entire use case that you are trying to build here so that we can assist you better?
The flow of your project would help us understand the problem better.

[VaZark]

Hi @paragbhingre , sorry about the late reply.

I have a standard django backend running on python 3.10 hosted on CodeCommit. I went with docker and Fargate as python 3.10 is not supported on AWS beanstalk yet.

The flow would be,

1. Build the container with the latest commit from codecommit
2. Run tests with python manage.py test
3. Only on success it shoud push the image to ECR and deploy to instance
4. Predeploy commands like db migrations (and rollback on failure) with python manage.py migrate and update static files with python manage.py collectstatic

[efekarakus]

Do we need to redeploy the entire task ?

Can you elaborate what you mean by task? The pipeline gets triggered for each push to the CodeCommit repository.
So anything changed in the repository (manifest files, code changes) would trigger a deployment.

Can we have an option ti redeploy only the service with the dockerfile?

Just to clarify, do you have multiple services in your CodeCommit repository and you'd like to limit the pipeline to only a single service?
If that's the question, then you can modify the pipeline manifest like this:

stages:
  - name: test
    deployments:
       <service name>:

This will limit the deployment to only a single service with the given <service name>.

[VaZark]

Just apologising in advance as I may mix names up as I am new to ECS (or just doing things wrong 😬).

I just wanted to know if I can deploy a different dockerfile without generating a new revision (of the service).

IIRC, using the command aws ecs update-service --cluster ${{ secrets.ECS_CLUSTER }} --service ${{ secrets.ECS_SERVICE }} --force-new-deployment deploys the dockerfile without a new revision

[efekarakus]

Just apologising in advance as I may mix names up as I am new to ECS (or just doing things wrong 😬).

No worries at all 😂 I totally understand that it takes a while to wrap our heads around these new concepts.

IIRC, using the command aws ecs update-service --cluster ${{ secrets.ECS_CLUSTER }} --service ${{ secrets.ECS_SERVICE }} --force-new-deployment deploys the dockerfile without a new revision

Ah I see, yes! this is possible today with copilot. You can use the --force flag with svc deploy for example: copilot svc deploy --force.
There is no way of achieving this functionality within a pipeline unfortunately.

[VaZark]

Too bad. I'm usually hesitant to use --force as that can imply deployment without rollback in case of errors.

[efekarakus]

If I may ask, why would you need --force through a CI/CD pipeline? As far as I know, --force is mainly useful if the image is tagged with latest and you want to replace all the existing containers with the new image.

Copilot's pipeline never uses the latest tag instead each image in the generated CloudFormation template references the image digest and hence running --force wouldn't help in the first place. Does that make sense?
The ECS service will get updated if there are any service definition changes (such as adding a load balancer) or when a new task revision gets created (updated container image, task size, ..)