Bootstrapping an AWS CDK app with a workflow - Amazon CodeCatalyst
When to use the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' actionHow the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action worksCDK CLI versions used by the "AWS CDK bootstrap" actionRuntime image used by the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action

Bootstrapping an AWS CDK app with a workflow

This section describes how to bootstrap an AWS CDK application using a CodeCatalyst workflow. To accomplish this, you must add the AWS CDK bootstrap action to your workflow. The AWS CDK bootstrap action provisions a bootstrap stack in your AWS environment using the modern template. If a bootstrap stack already exists, the action updates it if necessary. Having a bootstrap stack present in AWS is a prerequisite for deploying an AWS CDK app.

For more information about bootstrapping, see Bootstrapping in the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) Developer Guide.

Topics

When to use the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action

Use this action if you have a workflow that deploys an AWS CDK app, and you want to deploy (and update, if needed) the bootstrap stack at the same time. In this case, you would add the AWS CDK bootstrap action to the same workflow as the one that deploys your AWS CDK app.

Do not use this action if either of the following applies:

  • You already deployed a bootstrap stack using another mechanism, and you want to keep it intact (no updates).

  • You want to use a custom bootstrap template, which is not supported with the AWS CDK bootstrap action.

How the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action works

The AWS CDK bootstrap works as follows:

  1. At runtime, if you specified version 1.0.7 or earlier of the action, the action downloads the latest CDK CLI (also called the AWS CDK Tookit) to the CodeCatalyst build image.

    If you specified version 1.0.8 or later, the action comes bundled with a specific version of the CDK CLI, so no download occurs.

  2. The action uses the CDK CLI to run the cdk bootstrap command. This command performs the bootstrapping tasks described in the Bootstrapping topic in the AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) Developer Guide.

CDK CLI versions used by the "AWS CDK bootstrap" action

The following table shows which version of the CDK CLI is used by default by different versions of the AWS CDK bootstrap action.

Note

You might be able to override the default. For more information, see CdkCliVersion in the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action YAML.

'AWS CDK bootstrap' action version AWS CDK CLI version

1.0.0 – 1.0.7

latest

1.0.8 or later

2.99.1

Runtime image used by the 'AWS CDK bootstrap' action

The following table shows the runtime environment images that CodeCatalyst uses to run different versions of the AWS CDK bootstrap action. The images include different sets of preinstalled tooling. For more information, see Active images.

Note

We recommend upgrading your AWS CDK bootstrap action to version 2.x to take advantage of the latest tooling available on the March 2024 image. To upgrade the action, set its Identifier property to aws/cdk-bootstrap@v2 in your workflow definition file. For more information, see 'AWS CDK deploy' action YAML.

'AWS CDK bootstrap' action version Runtime environment images

1.x

November 2022 images

2.x

March 2024 images