[pipelines]: Allow customizing the CodeBuild project for building Docker images

[wolverian]

Allow the user to specify environment variables, build images etc. for how Docker images are built with CDK pipelines.

Use Case

I have a Docker image that requires DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 set. I would also like to update the environment image from aws/codebuild/standard:4.0 to aws/codebuild/standard:5.0. I don't see easy ways to do this right now, and dropping down from automatic builds with cdk-pipelines to configuring your own CodeBuildActions seems like a fairly big refactoring.

Proposed Solution

I don't have a proposed API for this; the current "automagic" configuration of Docker builds via Stages doesn't really surface any hooks to us where we could add customization options. Some options would be:

• Add properties to the CdkPipeline itself with high-level configuration properties for building assets.
• Add API to CdkPipeline to get the build projects for each assets and let the user configure them directly.

This is a 🚀 Feature Request

[nemanjko]

I think this goes along my issue that I am currently experiencing with CDKPipeline construct. Thinks were working fine until today. Today my CodeBuild stage was breaking with the following error:

[Container] 2021/04/12 13:22:33 Running command npm install -g aws-cdk
npm ERR! code ETARGET
npm ERR! notarget No matching version found for @aws-cdk/region-info@1.98.0.
npm ERR! notarget In most cases you or one of your dependencies are requesting
npm ERR! notarget a package version that doesn't exist.
npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
npm ERR! /root/.npm/_logs/2021-04-12T13_22_38_578Z-debug.log
[Container] 2021/04/12 13:22:38 Command did not exit successfully npm install -g aws-cdk exit status 1
[Container] 2021/04/12 13:22:38 Phase complete: INSTALL State: FAILED
[Container] 2021/04/12 13:22:38 Phase context status code: COMMAND_EXECUTION_ERROR Message: Error while executing command: npm install -g aws-cdk. Reason: exit status 1

The only explanation I see is that the new aws-cdk version 1.98.0 has some dependency issue (as usual with CDK).

I solved it by manually modifying buildspec in CodeBuild, replacing
"commands": "npm install -g aws-cdk" with
"commands": "npm install -g aws-cdk@1.96.0"

Then it worked again.

[njlynch]

@nemanjko - I'm super late to the party, but I don't think the error you encountered was related to this issue. From the timestamps, it looks like you ran into this error just as 1.98.0 was being published. I suspect aws-cdk@1.98.0 had been fully propagated and was available, but @aws-cdk/region-info@1.98.0 had not, resulting in the error. We publish our packages in topological order, but that doesn't always translate into when they're available via npm install. Had you simply re-tried the failing job (likely after ~20 minutes), I suspect the error would have gone away on its own.

[rix0rrr]

This issue will be addressed by #15169 and #12326, so closing as duplicate.

[github-actions]

⚠️COMMENT VISIBILITY WARNING⚠️

Comments on closed issues are hard for our team to see.
If you need more assistance, please either tag a team member or open a new issue that references this one.
If you wish to keep having a conversation with other community members under this issue feel free to do so.