Manual set up to develop custom components with AWSTOE

The AWS Task Orchestrator and Executor (AWSTOE) application is a standalone application that creates, validates, and runs commands within a component definition framework. AWS services can use AWSTOE to orchestrate workflows, install software, modify system configurations, and test image builds.

Follow these steps to manually install the AWSTOE application and use it as a stand-alone application to develop custom components. Image Builder takes care of these steps for you, if you use the Image Builder console or AWS CLI commands to create custom components. For more information, see Create custom components with Image Builder.

Step 1: Install AWSTOE

To develop components locally, download and install the AWSTOE application.

1. Download the AWSTOE application

   To install AWSTOE, choose the appropriate download link for your architecture and platform. For the full list of application download links, see AWSTOE downloads

   Important

   AWS is phasing out support for TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1. To access the S3 bucket for AWSTOE downloads, your client software must use TLS version 1.2 or later. For more information, see this AWS Security Blog post.

2. Verify the signature

   The steps for verifying your download depend on the server platform where you run the AWSTOE application after you install it. To verify your download on a Linux server, see Verify the signature on Linux or macOS. To verify your download on a Windows server, see Verify the signature on Windows.

Note

AWSTOE is invoked directly from its download location. There is no need for a separate install step. This also means that AWSTOE can make changes to the local environment.

To ensure that you isolate changes during component development, we recommend that you use an EC2 instance to develop and test AWSTOE components.

Step 2: Set AWS credentials

AWSTOE requires AWS credentials to connect to other AWS services, such as Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudWatch, when running tasks, such as:

• Downloading AWSTOE documents from a user-provided Amazon S3 path.

• Running S3Download or S3Upload action modules.

• Streaming logs to CloudWatch, when enabled.

If you are running AWSTOE on an EC2 instance, then running AWSTOE uses the same permissions as the IAM role attached to the EC2 instance.

For more information about IAM roles for EC2, see IAM roles for Amazon EC2.

The following examples show how to set AWS credentials using the AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables.

To set these variables on Linux, macOS, or Unix, use export.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_access_key_id

export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your_secret_access_key

To set these variables on Windows using PowerShell, use $env.

$env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_access_key_id

$env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your_secret_access_key

To set these variables on Windows using the command prompt, use set.

set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=your_access_key_id

set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=your_secret_access_key

Step 3: Develop component documents locally

Components are authored with plaintext YAML documents. For more information about document syntax, see Use the AWSTOE component document framework for custom components.

The following are example Hello World component documents to help you get started.

Linux

Some of the Linux component examples in this guide refer to a component document file named hello-world-linux.yml. You can use the following document to get started with those examples.

name: Hello World
description: This is hello world testing document for Linux.
schemaVersion: 1.0
phases:
  - name: build
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the build phase.'
  - name: validate
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the validate phase.'
  - name: test
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the test phase.'

Windows

Some of the Windows component examples in this guide refer to a component document file named hello-world-windows.yml. You can use the following document to get started with those examples.

name: Hello World
description: This is Hello World testing document for Windows.
schemaVersion: 1.0
phases:
  - name: build
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecutePowerShell
        inputs:
          commands:
            - Write-Host 'Hello World from the build phase.'
  - name: validate
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecutePowerShell
        inputs:
          commands:
            - Write-Host 'Hello World from the validate phase.'
  - name: test
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecutePowerShell
        inputs:
          commands:
            - Write-Host 'Hello World from the test phase.'

macOS

Some of the macOS component examples in this guide refer to a component document file named hello-world-macos.yml. You can use the following document to get started with those examples.

name: Hello World
description: This is hello world testing document for macOS.
schemaVersion: 1.0
phases:
  - name: build
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the build phase.'
  - name: validate
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the validate phase.'
  - name: test
    steps:
      - name: HelloWorldStep
        action: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          commands:
            - echo 'Hello World from the test phase.'

Step 4: Validate AWSTOE components

You can validate the syntax of AWSTOE components locally with the AWSTOE application. The following examples show the AWSTOE application validate command to validate the syntax of a component without running it.

Note

The AWSTOE application can validate only the component syntax for the current operating system. For example, when running awstoe.exe on Windows, you cannot validate the syntax for a Linux document that uses the ExecuteBash action module.

Linux or macOS

awstoe validate --documents /home/user/hello-world.yml

Windows

awstoe.exe validate --documents C:\Users\user\Documents\hello-world.yml

Step 5: Run AWSTOE components

The AWSTOE application can run one or more phases of specified documents using the --phases command line argument. Supported values for --phases are build, validate, and test. Multiple phase values can be entered as comma separated values.

When you provide a list of phases, the AWSTOE application sequentially runs the specified phases of each document. For example, AWSTOE runs the build and validate phases of document1.yaml, followed by the build and validate phases of document2.yaml.

To ensure that your logs are stored securely and retained for troubleshooting, we recommend configuring log storage in Amazon S3. In Image Builder, the Amazon S3 location for publishing logs is specified in the infrastructure configuration. For more information about infrastructure configuration, see Manage Image Builder infrastructure configuration

If a list of phases is not provided, the AWSTOE application runs all phases in the order listed in the YAML document.

To run specific phases in single or multiple documents, use the following commands.

Single phase

awstoe run --documents hello-world.yml --phases build

Multiple phases

awstoe run --documents hello-world.yml --phases build,test

Document run

Run all phases in a single document

awstoe run --documents documentName.yaml

Run all phases in multiple documents

awstoe run --documents documentName1.yaml,documentName2.yaml

Enter Amazon S3 information to upload AWSTOE logs from a user-defined local path (recommended)

awstoe run --documents documentName.yaml --log-s3-bucket-name amzn-s3-demo-destination-bucket --log-s3-key-prefix S3KeyPrefix --log-s3-bucket-owner S3BucketOwner --log-directory local_path

Run all phases in a single document, and display all logs on the console

awstoe run --documents documentName.yaml --trace

Example command

awstoe run --documents s3://bucket/key/doc.yaml --phases build,validate

Run document with unique ID

awstoe run --documents documentName.yaml --execution-id user-provided-id --phases build,test

Get help with AWSTOE

awstoe --help