(pipelines): Run a step without deploying stacks

[alexpulver]

CDK Pipelines modern API allows to run a step without deploying stacks using the following "trick":

pipeline = pipelines.CodePipeline(...)

kubectl = pipelines.ShellStep(
    "Kubectl",
    commands=["kubectl apply -f deployment.yml"],
)
pipeline.add_wave("Kubernetes", post=[kubectl])

The feature request is to provide a dedicated API for this, as the above is not obvious.

Use Case

Below are examples of use cases where running a step without deploying stacks is useful:

• Continuous Compliance Workflow for Infrastructure as Code
• Building end-to-end AWS DevSecOps CI/CD pipeline with open source SCA, SAST and DAST tools
• Secure and analyse your Terraform code using AWS CodeCommit, AWS CodePipeline, AWS CodeBuild and tfsec

Proposed Solution

Implement pipelines.CodePipeline.add_step(step: Step) API. For example:

pipeline = pipelines.CodePipeline(...)
kubectl = pipelines.ShellStep(
    "Kubectl",
    commands=["kubectl apply -f deployment.yml"],
)
pipeline.add_step(kubectl)

Other

• 👋 I may be able to implement this feature request
• ⚠️ This feature might incur a breaking change

---

This is a 🚀 Feature Request

[markusl]

It's a similar issue we faced previously: #15945 It sounded like the functionality was by design in the new API. But I must agree it would make sense to make it easier to add custom steps without deploying stacks at the same time.

[github-actions[bot]]

This issue has not received any attention in 1 year. If you want to keep this issue open, please leave a comment below and auto-close will be canceled.

[rfcsilva]

Is this feature request expected to be implemented in the near future?

[atali]

any news on that feature ?

[madeline-k]

Thank you for submitting this feature request! After closer examination of the issue by CDK product and development team, there are no plans to implement this in the near feature. This would be a good candidate for a separate 3p construct library.

I am moving this to a GitHub discussion so the information in this thread can continue to be accessible, and folks can learn how to do this themselves.