(aws-cdk): cdk diff always fallback to no change-set diff

[singlewind]

Describe the bug

We are migrating cloudformation template to CDK. In our CDK stack, we have included a cloudformation template. When we run diff, it shows warning

Failed to create change set with error: 'The following CloudFormation Parameters are missing a value: XXX, YYY, ZZZ', falling back to no change-set diff

I tried to specify parameters with --parameters XXX=xxx,YYY=yyy,ZZZ=zzz flag. But no luck. As I know, cdk deploy has this flag. How can we specify in cdk diff

Expected Behavior

cdk diff stackName --parameters XXX=xxx,YYY=yyy,ZZZ=zzz will create a changeset in AWS Cloudformation and display the difference. Then remove the changeset.

Current Behavior

Just show the difference against the current included cloudformation template.

Reproduction Steps

cdk diff stackName --parameters XXX=xxx,YYY=yyy,ZZZ=zzz

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information/Context

No response

CDK CLI Version

2.121.1

Framework Version

No response

Node.js Version

20

OS

ubuntu

Language

TypeScript

Language Version

5.3.3

Other information

No response

[pahud]

Can you share a minimal CFN template that reproduces this issue? I am guessing your template may not have those parameters defined but I am not 100% sure.

[github-actions]

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[msessa]

It would be great if we could pass an option to cdk diff to disable falling back to template only diff.

This would be particularly useful to catch errors returned by change-set level Hooks or by transform macros early, ideally before deployment.

As a use case, we have a Macro+Transform that performs an online lookup for a group in Identity Center. If the group doesn't exist the transform will report an error but that ends up not being displayed when using cdk diff.

Sample output:

$ npx cdk diff -e my-stack
Hold on while we create a read-only change set to get a diff with accurate replacement information (use --no-change-set to use a less accurate but faster template-only diff)
Could not create a change set, will base the diff on template differences (run again with -v to see the reason)

Sample output with verbose enabled

$ npx cdk diff -v -e my-stack
[01:45:37] CDK toolkit version: 2.174.1 (build f353fc7)
...
[01:45:43] Attempting to create ChangeSet with name cdk-diff-change-set for my-stack
[01:45:43] Initiated creation of changeset: arn:aws:cloudformation:ap-southeast-4:0000000000:changeSet/cdk-diff-change-set/8e57cbbf-c97c-491e-8cfe-76015ecb7066; waiting for it to finish creating...
[01:45:43] Waiting for changeset cdk-diff-change-set on stack my-stack to finish creating...
[01:45:44] Changeset cdk-diff-change-set on stack my-stack is still creating
[01:45:49] Error: Failed to create ChangeSet cdk-diff-change-set on my-stack: FAILED, Transform 000000000::GroupIdResolver failed with: Cannot find the group named 'NonExistingGroup'.