Amazon Web Services (AWS) this week launched a preview release of the Amazon CodeCatalyst framework that leverages blueprints to automatically provision and configure developer environments in its cloud.
Announced at the AWS re:Invent 2022 conference, Amazon CodeCatalyst takes advantage of a Project Blueprints tool to launch a source code repository and a project management tracker that are then used to create build and release pipelines. DevOps teams can use either the tools provided by AWS or substitute an instance of, for example, GitHub or the Jira project management software.
Amazon CTO Werner Vogels told conference attendees the goal is to reduce the friction that developers currently encounter whenever they need to launch a new development project. As part of that effort, Amazon CodeCatalyst promises to make it simpler to consistently replicate development environments using scaffolds in addition to providing dashboards and search capabilities for tracking changes across commits, pull requests and deployments.
Amazon CodeCatalyst uses a devfile to define the configuration of an environment that comes in four resizable instance options made up of two, four, eight or 16 virtual CPUs. The devfile defines and configures all the resources needed to code, test and debug a project. Devfiles, which are added to the source code repository by the selected blueprint, can also be modified.
Collectively, those capabilities make it possible to deploy sample TypeScript, Python, Java, .NET, JavaScript, React, Angular and Vue code running in a few minutes. Developers can work with the AWS Cloud9 integrated development environment (IDE) or use tools such as JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, PyCharm Pro, GoLand and Visual Studio Code on their local machine. Developers, as a result, can simply switch between multiple codebases or collaborate with other developers as needed.
The pipelines can be run on pre-provisioned builds in the cloud or organizations can opt to deploy their own container environments. Developers can incorporate build actions that are built in or provided by AWS partners in addition to incorporating GitHub Actions to compose fully automated pipelines that can be configured using either a visual editor or YAML files. Build and release pipelines enable deployment on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS), AWS Lambda and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) services.
In general, Vogels advocated that IT teams should build event-driven applications that are loosely coupled to make it simpler to add new capabilities to existing applications running at scale without impacting the entire codebase. To make it simpler to build those types of applications, AWS added an Amazon EventBridge Pipes tool that creates point-to-point integrations between event producers and consumers in a way that eliminates the need to write that code. AWS also made available in preview a graphical AWS Application Composer tool that makes it simpler to design, configure and build serverless applications using infrastructure-as-code (IaC) definitions.
It’s not clear to what degree developers will be embracing event-driven applications. As a programming model, event-driven architectures have been around for decades. The issue has been those applications also have tended to be among the most challenging to build and maintain. AWS is now clearly signaling its intent to make building those applications a lot easier.
