go-elasticbeanstalk

This repository contains:

• ebc, a command-line tool that simplifies deployment of binaries to AWS Elastic Beanstalk
• a simple elasticbeanstalk API client package written in Go
• a sample Go web app that can be deployed to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, along with the necessary configuration to work around the lack of official Go support (see Implementation details below)

Documentation on Sourcegraph

ebc command-line client for AWS Elastic Beanstalk

ebc makes it easy to build and deploy binary source bundles to AWS Elastic Beanstalk. You still must use eb to configure and initialize applications and environments. (If you want to deploy your whole git repository, just use the official eb tool.)

• Install ebc: go get github.com/sqs/go-elasticbeanstalk/cmd/ebc
• Install the AWS Elastic Beanstalk eb command-line tool

Walkthrough

Let's deploy a simple Go web app to Elastic Beanstalk.

First, we need to create the application and environment. Follow AWS EB documentation to get them set up. Once complete, you should be running the sample Node.js app (it says "Congratulations"). We're going to deploy our Go web app over that sample app.

Now, make sure you've installed ebc into your PATH. Then, from the top-level directory of this repository, run the following command:

ebc -dir=webapp deploy -h

Check the defaults for the -app, -bucket, -env, and -label flags. These values are read from the .elasticbeanstalk/config file you set up using eb init. They should refer to the application and environment you created previously.

If these values look good, then run:

ebc -dir=webapp deploy

After a few seconds, you'll see a message like Deploy initiated (took 5.22s). Now, check the AWS Elastic Beanstalk dashboard to verify that a new application is being deployed. Once it's complete, browsing to the environment's URL should display the "Hello from Go!" text, along with some debugging info. You're done!

Deploying from multiple branches

The eb and ebc tools both support deploying from multiple branches. When you switch to another branch (with git checkout), run eb branch to configure the branch's deployment. The ebc tool reads eb's configuration for a branch, so there are no extra steps beyond configuring eb correctly. To inspect the configuration that ebc will use to deploy, run ebc -dir=DIR deploy -h.

The sample webapp in this repository displays the git branch used to deploy it, so you can verify that branch deployment was successful.

Implementation details

Faking Go support in Elastic Beanstalk

NOTE: Since this section was written, Elastic Beanstalk added Docker support, which lets you run Go apps. If you use Docker, ignore this section. The ebc tool is still useful even if you are using Docker (or any other language, for that matter).

Because Elastic Beanstalk doesn't natively support Go, we have to use a few tricks (in the webapp/ and worker/ dirs):

1. In .ebextensions/go.config, we run a command to install Go on the server, using the commands config feature.
2. In .ebextensions/server.config, we trick Elastic Beanstalk into thinking that our Go app is a Node.js app and just tell it to run the command go run server.go.

More information can be found at the Elastic Beanstalk docs for Node.js apps.

Contact

Contact @sqs with questions.