AWS makes CI, microservices moves for devs

With its new offerings unveiled this week, Amazon Web Services is making advancements in software building and microservices.

The company introduced AWS CodeBuild, into to smooth out software building and continuous integration processes, and AWS Step Functions, for building complex, distributed applications that connect Web and microservices via visual workflows.

AWS CodeBuild is a managed build service for compiling source code and running unit tests, integrated with other application lifecycle management services, such as AWS CodeDeploy, CodeCommit, and CodePipeline. The service addresses the challenges of running separate build servers for CI builds and tests, or setting up build farms CI/continuous deployment pipelines.

“You don’t need to provision servers ahead of time,” Jeff Barr, chief evangelist for AWS, said. “CodeBuild will scale to accommodate your build volume instead of letting pending builds stack up.” Users pay on a minute-by-minute basis, with the service now available.

AWS Step Functions, meanwhile, helps developers focus on coding instead of coordination when conducting activities like setting up business processes or a processing pipeline. State machines, for defining a set of states and transitions, are key to the service. They can be activated sequentially or in parallel. “You can coordinate the components of your application as series of steps in a visual workflow,” Barr said. “You create state machines in the Step Functions Console to specify and execute the steps of your application at scale.” Each state machine can have multiple copies running independently, and most interaction with Step Functions will happen via APIs. Step Functions is available now in parts of the United States, as well as in Ireland and Tokyo.