Packager plugin

Why ?

When installing Node.js and python dependencies to create a package for Lambda, some modules may not be compatible with the execution environment of Amazon Lambda, because of differences of version of Node.js, python or GCC when modules have C++ bindings. The @myrmex/packager plugin helps to prevent this problem.

How it works

A common solution to this problem is to create the packages on a EC2 instance using an Amazon Linux AMI. To avoid having to use a server to deploy serverless application, @myrmex/packager uses the Docker image myrmex/lambda-packager based on the Amazon Linux image. The image myrmex/lambda-packager comes with all Node.js and python runtimes supported by Amazon Lambda and GCC.

When the plugin @myrmex/lambda deploys a Lambda, @myrmex/packager takes in charge the creation of the package by executing docker run myrmex/lambda-packager with appropriates parameters.

Prerequisites

To use the @myrmex/packager plugin, it is necessary to have Docker installed on the environment that perform the deployment of Lambdas.

Installation

Install the npm module in a Myrmex project:

npm install @myrmex/packager

Then enable the plugin in the myrmex.json file:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "plugins": [
    "@myrmex/lambda"
    "@myrmex/packager"
  ]
}

Once the plugin is installed and enabled in the project, the @myrmex/lambda plugin will use it to create packages when deploying Node.js and python Lambdas.

Configuration

These are Myrmex configuration keys specific to to the @myrmex/packager plugin.

Default values

Using myrmex show-config after installing the plugin, we can see the default configuration:

{
  "packager": {
    "bucket": null,
    "docker": {
      "useSudo": false,
      "showStdout": false
    }
  }
}

packager.bucket

Name of the S3 bucket where the packages will be uploaded. If it does not exists, @myrmex/packager will try to create it. If this configuration key is not provided, @myrmex/packager will directly upload the packages to Lambda without using S3.

packager.docker.useSudo

If set to true, @myrmex/packager will use sudo to execute docker run. Alternatively, it is possible to manage Docker as a non-root user using a group.

packager.docker.showStdout

It set to true, the output of docker run will be diplayed in the terminal.