How to auto deploying git repositories with submodules on AWS?

Question

I have a submodule in my git repository and my directory structure is like,

app
  -- folder1
  -- folder2
  -- submodule @5855

I have deployed

Answer 1

It has been so long since the issue with submodules was found. But aws cannot fix it. So codepipeline cannot send .git directory to codebuild. So we have to invent new bicecles, my fix is this in buildspec.yml pre-build command

rm -rf $PWD/*
git clone --depth 1 https://<REPO NAME>  -b develop .
git submodule update --init --recursive

AWS hurry up, cuz our team is considering move back to github.

Answer 2

Borrowing from the concepts of @MattBucci and @JoshuaEvans. Here is what we did. We could not install git in our pipeline, because of strict access/security issues with ssh. So we ended up doing this thru HTTP instead.

1. I created a new Github Personal Access Token
2. I stored the PAT in the AWS Secrets manager as a SecureString. This doesn't actually change anything within CodeBuild, since it's smart enough to just know how to decrypt the key
3. I gave the "codebuild" role to read from Secrets manager
4. I made my buildspec.yml file, using a bunch of the commands suggested by @matt-bucci and @JoshuaEvans, as well as some new ones

version: 0.2
env:
    variables:
      token: " token "
    secrets-manager:
      personalAccessToken: $personalAccessTokenPath
phases:
    install:
      runtime-versions:
        nodejs: 12
      commands:
          - cd <to the folder where you want the submodules>
          - wget --header="Authorization:$token$personalAccessToken" --content-disposition  https://github.com/uri/zipball/$branch/
          - unzip project*.zip -d project-folder
          - rm -rf project*.zip
          - cd project-folder
          - mv project*/* .
          - rm -rf project*
          - cd <back to your base folder where the buildspec is>
    pre_build:
      commands:
        - xxx
    build:
      commands:
        - xxx
    post_build:
      commands:
        - xxx
artifacts:
    files:
      - '**/*'
    base-directory: dist

Hope this helps!

Answer 3

I ran into this issue myself and, thanks to the awesome suggestions by @matt-bucci I was able to come up with what seems like a robust solution.

My specific use-case is slightly different - I am using Lambda Layers to reduce lambda redundancy, but still need to include the layers as submodules in the Lambda function repositories so that CodeBuild can build and test PRs. I am also using CodePipeline to assist with continuous delivery - so I need a system that works with both CodePipeline and CodeBuild by itself

1. I created a new SSH key for use by a "machine user" following these instructions. I am using a machine user in this case so that a new ssh key doesn't need to be generated for every project, as well as for potential support of multiple private submodules

2. I stored the private key in the AWS Parameter Store as a SecureString. This doesn't actually change anything within CodeBuild, since it's smart enough to just know how to decrypt the key

3. I gave the "codebuild" role AWS managed property: AmazonSSMReadOnlyAccess - allowing CodeBuild to access the private key

4. I made my buildspec.yml file, using a bunch of the commands suggested by @matt-bucci, as well as some new ones

# This example buildspec will enable submodules for CodeBuild projects that are both 
# triggered directly and via CodePipeline
#
# This buildspec is designed with help from Stack Overflow: 
# https://stackoverflow.com/questions/42712542/how-to-auto-deploying-git-repositories-with-submodules-on-aws
version: 0.2  # Always use version 2
env:
  variables:
    # The remote origin that will be used if building through CodePipeline
    remote_origin: "git@github.com:your/gitUri"
  parameter-store:
    # The SSH RSA Key used by our machine user
    ssh_key: "ssh_key_name_goes_here"
phases:
  install:
    commands:
      # Add the "machine user's" ssh key and activate it - this allows us to get private (sub) repositories
      - mkdir -p ~/.ssh                   # Ensure the .ssh directory exists
      - echo "$ssh_key" > ~/.ssh/ssh_key  # Save the machine user's private key
      - chmod 600 ~/.ssh/ssh_key          # Adjust the private key permissions (avoids a critical error)
      - eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"            # Initialize the ssh agent
      - ssh-add ~/.ssh/ssh_key            # Add the machine user's key to the ssh "keychain"
      # SSH Credentials have been set up. Check for a .git directory to determine if we need to set up our git package
      - |
        if [ ! -d ".git" ]; then
          git init                                              # Initialize Git
          git remote add origin "$remote_origin"                # Add the remote origin so we can fetch
          git fetch                                             # Get all the things
          git checkout -f "$CODEBUILD_RESOLVED_SOURCE_VERSION"  # Checkout the specific commit we are building
        fi
      # Now that setup is complete, get submodules
      - git submodule init
      - git submodule update --recursive
      # Additional install steps... (npm install, etc)
  build:
    commands:
      # Build commands...
artifacts:
  files:
    # Artifact Definitions...

This install script performs three discrete steps

1. It installs and enables the ssh private key used to access private repositories

2. It determines if there is a .git folder - if there isn't then the script will initialize git and checkout the exact commit that is being built. Note: According to the AWS docs, the $CODEBUILD_RESOLVED_SOURCE_VERSION envar is not guranteed to be present in CodePipeline builds. However, I have not seen this fail

3. Finally, it actually gets the submodules

Obviously, this is not a great solution to this problem. However, it's the best I can come up with given the (unnecessary) limitations of CodePipeline. A side effect of this process is that the "Source" CodePipeline stage is completely worthless, since we just overwrite the archived source files - it's only used to listen for changes to the repository

Better functionality has been requested for over 2 years now: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=248267

Edited January, 23, 2019

I realized (the hard way) that my previous response didn't support CodePipeline builds, only builds run through CodeBuild directly. When CodeBuild responds to a GitHub Webhook, it will clone the entire GitHub repository, including the .git folder

However, when using CodePipeline, the "Source" action will clone the repository, check out the appropriate branch, then artifact the raw files without the .git folder. This means that we do have to initialize the github repository to get access to submodules

Answer 4

SSH is not needed if you're using CodeCommit as a repository. Use the AWS CLI Credential Helper and clone over https.

git config --global credential.helper '!aws codecommit credential-helper $@'
git config --global credential.UseHttpPath true
git clone https://git-codecommit.[region].amazonaws.com/v1/repos/[repo]

Answer 5

After banging my head against this all day, I've found a simple solution (for Code Pipeline) that doesn't require any SSH key juggling in the buildspec. I am using Bitbucket but I would think this would work for other providers. I'm also cloning my submodule via https, I'm not sure if that's a requirement or not.

1. Configure your source to do a full clone of the repository. This will pass along the git metadata that you need.

2. Configure your build role to add a customer-managed UseConnection permission to give your build action access to the credentials you configured for your source. Documentation from AWS here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/troubleshooting.html#codebuild-role-connections

3. Set up your env to include git-credential-helper: yes and clone the submodule in your buildspec.yml:

And that's it! Submodule will be available for build, and without having to do a bunch of key configuration for every submodule you want to use.

Maybe a good addition to the documentation if this ends up being useful for people.

Answer 6

I faced the same issue on AWS CodeBuild. I tick Use Git submodules like below image to update my submodule.

When I run the build I got following error,

CLIENT_ERROR: Submodule error error creating SSH agent: "SSH agent requested but SSH_AUTH_SOCK not-specified" for primary source and source version refs/heads/dev

So I googled the above error and got this DOWNLOAD_SOURCE Fails with Git submodules thread from AWS Forum. They've mentioned,

The submodules must be configured as https and not ssh.

I think this is useless, what will happen someone setup submodule as ssh. I also did the same, here is my .gitmodules file.

[submodule "common"]
    path = common
    url = git@bitbucket.org:organization_id/common.git

Really I don't want to change it to https. Then I found this Working with Git Submodules in CodePipeline article from medium. I would like to visualize what I did to solve this issue and there was an error that didn't mention in that article. Let's do this in more secure way.

---

First go to the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and go to the Customer managed keys section and click the Create key to create the key.

1. Click the Symmetric and click Next.

2. Give any name (ex:- bitbucket-credentials) to create Alias and click Next.

3. Most probably you already have an AWS Role to configure any of Developer Tools on AWS, so in my case I created a AWS Role call ecsCodeBuildRole for AWS CodeBuild and give the Define key administrative permissions for it and click Next.

4. Next give the Define key usage permissions for your AWS Role and click Next.

5. Finally review what you did so far and and click Finish to create the CMK.

6. You can review it like below.

---

So AWS Key Management Service (KMS) part is done, now go the AWS Systems Manager and find the Parameter Store section. Click Create parameter.

1. Just name it as id_rsa and put the same things like below.

2. For the value section, just run cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa command in your terminal and you'll get the output like below. Add it to the value section.

-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----
qdjbXp+42VTnccC7pxOZcofomfwGXPWuqcv99sQEPtToODvGIxWoooJUpb6qMIWY
1zccEuwAhmqcPvpsJyWhcctZB/wWglNvViZcOYjrQ8HBUBKJT8pF
-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----

3. Create another parameter and name it as id_rsa.pub. Follow the same steps like above.

4. For the value section, just run cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub command in your terminal and you'll get the output like below. Add it to the value section.

ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAADAQABAAABAQDGtf8jjkogWxRGNGjJlOZ1G+pWExgDOdA5wVML6TMTT2YtvhPJD60nPx5TfA8zRzGWubwrPp40SPAhSs5wiAAg38HlS4pz9X wasdkiller@wasdkiller

---

As my research(maybe I'm wrong, please correct me) I don't have any other way to pass ssh credentials to the AWS CodeBuild without this much of effort. So I changed my buildspec.yml file manually like this.

version: 0.2

env:
  parameter-store:
    ssh_key: id_rsa
    ssh_pub: id_rsa.pub

phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - mkdir -p ~/.ssh
      - echo "$ssh_key" > ~/.ssh/id_rsa   
      - echo "$ssh_pub" > ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
      - chmod 600 ~/.ssh/id_rsa
      - eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
      - git submodule update --init --recursive

When you continue you'll get below error surely,

Decrypted Variables Error: AccessDeniedException: User: arn:aws:sts::organization_id:assumed-role/ecsCodeBuildRole/AWSCodeBuild-12896abb-bdcf-4cfc-a12b-bcf30d6e96ab is not authorized to perform: ssm:GetParameters on resource: arn:aws:ssm:ap-southeast-2:organization_id:parameter/wasd status code: 400, request id: 23b94bc2-961e-4d86-9b73-d16e3bda357c

It'll ask you for ssm:GetParameters permission, Just attach AmazonSSMReadOnlyAccess policy or create policy manually with the ssm:GetParameters permission and attach it to your AWS Role, it'll solve this issue.