This is the AWS CDK v2 Developer Guide. The older CDK v1 entered maintenance on June 1, 2022 and ended support on June 1, 2023.

Bootstrap your environment for use with the AWS CDK

Bootstrap your AWS environment to prepare it for AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) stack deployments.

How to bootstrap your environment

You can use the AWS CDK Command Line Interface (AWS CDK CLI) or your preferred AWS CloudFormation deployment tool to bootstrap your environment.

Use the CDK CLI

You can use the CDK CLI cdk bootstrap command to bootstrap your environment. This is the method that we recommend if you don't require significant modifications to bootstrapping.

For more information on the cdk bootstrap command and supported options, see cdk bootstrap.

Use any AWS CloudFormation tool

You can copy the bootstrap template from the aws-cdk GitHub repository or obtain the template with the cdk bootstrap --show-template command. Then, use any AWS CloudFormation tool to deploy the template into your environment.

With this method, you can use AWS CloudFormation StackSets or AWS Control Tower. You can also use the AWS CloudFormation console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). You can make modifications to your template before you deploy it. This method may be more flexible and suitable for large-scale deployments.

The following is an example of using the --show-template option to retrieve and save the bootstrap template to your local machine:

macOS/Linux

$ cdk bootstrap --show-template > bootstrap-template.yaml

Windows

On Windows, PowerShell must be used to preserve the encoding of the template.

powershell "cdk bootstrap --show-template | Out-File -encoding utf8 bootstrap-template.yaml"

To deploy this template using the CDK CLI, you can run the following:

$ cdk bootstrap --template bootstrap-template.yaml

The following is an example of using the AWS CLI to deploy the template:

macOS/Linux

aws cloudformation create-stack \
  --stack-name CDKToolkit \
  --template-body file://path/to/bootstrap-template.yaml \
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM \
  --region us-west-1

Windows

aws cloudformation create-stack ^
  --stack-name CDKToolkit ^
  --template-body file://path/to/bootstrap-template.yaml ^
  --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM ^
  --region us-west-1

For information on using CloudFormation StackSets to bootstrap multiple environments, see Bootstrapping multiple AWS accounts for AWS CDK using CloudFormation StackSets in the AWS Cloud Operations & Migrations Blog.

When to bootstrap your environment

You must bootstrap each environment before you deploy into the environment. If you attempt to deploy a CDK stack into an environment that hasn’t been bootstrapped, you will see an error like the following:

$ cdk deploy

✨  Synthesis time: 2.02s

 ❌ Deployment failed: Error: BootstrapExampleStack: SSM parameter /cdk-bootstrap/hnb659fds/version not found. Has the environment been bootstrapped? Please run 'cdk bootstrap' (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/latest/guide/bootstrapping.html)

It’s okay to bootstrap an environment more than once. If an environment has already been bootstrapped, the bootstrap stack will be upgraded if necessary. Otherwise, nothing will happen.

Update your bootstrap stack

Periodically, the CDK team will update the bootstrap template to a new version. When this happens, we recommend that you update your bootstrap stack. If you haven’t customized the bootstrapping process, you can update your bootstrap stack by following the same steps that you took to originally bootstrap your environment. For more information, see Bootstrap template version history.

Default resources created during bootstrapping

IAM roles created during bootstrapping

By default, bootstrapping provisions the following AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles in your environment:

Resource IDs created during bootstrapping

When you deploy the default bootstrap template, physical IDs for bootstrap resources are created using the following structure: cdk-qualifier-description-account-ID-Region.

The following is an example physical ID of the Amazon S3 staging bucket created during bootstrapping: cdk-hnb659fds-assets-012345678910-us-west-1.

Customize bootstrapping

If the default bootstrap template doesn’t suit your needs, you can customize the bootstrapping of resources into your environment in the following ways:

For more information on customizing bootstrapping, see Customize AWS CDK bootstrapping.

Bootstrapping with CDK Pipelines

If you are using CDK Pipelines to deploy into another account's environment, and you receive a message like the following:

Policy contains a statement with one or more invalid principals

This error message means that the appropriate IAM roles do not exist in the other environment. The most likely cause is that the environment has not been bootstrapped. Bootstrap the environment and try again.

Protecting your bootstrap stack from deletion

If a bootstrap stack is deleted, the AWS resources that were originally provisioned in the environment to support CDK deployments will also be deleted. This will cause the pipeline to stop working. If this happens, there is no general solution for recovery.

After your environment is bootstrapped, do not delete and recreate the environment’s bootstrap stack. Instead, try to update the bootstrap stack to a new version by running the cdk bootstrap command again.

To protect against accidental deletion of your bootstrap stack, we recommend that you provide the --termination-protection option with the cdk bootstrap command to enable termination protection. You can enable termination protection on new or existing bootstrap stacks. For instructions on enabling termination protection, see Enable termination protection for the bootstrap stack.

Bootstrap template version history

The bootstrap template is versioned and evolves over time with the AWS CDK itself. If you provide your own bootstrap template, keep it up to date with the canonical default template. You want to make sure that your template continues to work with all CDK features.

This section contains a list of the changes made in each version.

Upgrade from legacy to modern bootstrap template

The AWS CDK v1 supported two bootstrapping templates, legacy and modern. CDK v2 supports only the modern template. For reference, here are the high-level differences between these two templates.

* We will add additional resources to the bootstrap template as needed.

An environment that was bootstrapped using the legacy template must be upgraded to use the modern template for CDK v2 by re-bootstrapping. Re-deploy all AWS CDK applications in the environment at least once before deleting the legacy bucket.

Address Security Hub Findings

If you are using AWS Security Hub, you may see findings reported on some of the resources created by the AWS CDK bootstrapping process. Security Hub findings help you find resource configurations you should double-check for accuracy and safety. We have reviewed these specific resource configurations with AWS Security and are confident they do not constitute a security problem.

[KMS.2] IAM principals should not have IAM inline policies that allow decryption actions on all KMS keys

The deploy role (DeploymentActionRole) grants permission to read encrypted data, which is necessary for cross-account deployments with CDK Pipelines. Policies in this role do not grant permission to all data. It only grants permission to read encrypted data from Amazon S3 and AWS KMS, and only when those resources allow it through their bucket or key policy.

The following is a snippet of these two statements in the deploy role from the bootstrap template:

DeploymentActionRole:
    Type: AWS::IAM::Role
    Properties:
      ...
      Policies:
        - PolicyDocument:
            Statement:
              ...
              - Sid: PipelineCrossAccountArtifactsBucket
                Effect: Allow
                Action:
                  - s3:GetObject*
                  - s3:GetBucket*
                  - s3:List*
                  - s3:Abort*
                  - s3:DeleteObject*
                  - s3:PutObject*
                Resource: "*"
                Condition:
                  StringNotEquals:
                    s3:ResourceAccount:
                      Ref: AWS::AccountId
              - Sid: PipelineCrossAccountArtifactsKey
                Effect: Allow
                Action:
                  - kms:Decrypt
                  - kms:DescribeKey
                  - kms:Encrypt
                  - kms:ReEncrypt*
                  - kms:GenerateDataKey*
                Resource: "*"
                Condition:
                  StringEquals:
                    kms:ViaService:
                      Fn::Sub: s3.${AWS::Region}.amazonaws.com
              ...

Why does Security Hub flag this?

The policies contain a Resource: * combined with a Condition clause. Security Hub flags the * wildcard. This wildcard is used because at the time the account is bootstrapped, the AWS KMS key created by CDK Pipelines for the CodePipeline artifact bucket does not exist yet, and therefore, can’t be referenced on the bootstrap template by ARN. In addition, Security Hub does not consider the Condition clause when raising this flag. This Condition restricts Resource: * to requests made from the same AWS account of the AWS KMS key. These requests must come from Amazon S3 in the same AWS Region as the AWS KMS key.

Do I need to fix this finding?

As long as you have not modified the AWS KMS key on your bootstrap template to be overly permissive, the deploy role does not allow more access than it needs. Therefore, it is not necessary to fix this finding.

What if I want to fix this finding?

How you fix this finding depends on whether or not you will be using CDK Pipelines for cross-account deployments.

Considerations

Since bootstrapping provisions resources in your environment, you may incur AWS charges when those resources are used with the AWS CDK.