I'm diving into AWS and I'm tangled up when it comes to understanding the real differences between CodePipeline and CodeDeploy. I mean, CodePipeline seems to have the upper hand as an orchestrator for CI/CD, but I'm puzzled about why someone would opt for CodeDeploy alone. These questions keep stumping me: which is the best AWS service for automating code deployments? If CodePipeline covers that base, why would folks still use CodeDeploy?
5 Answers
They actually work well together! CodePipeline orchestrates the entire continuous integration/continuous delivery workflow, while CodeDeploy specifically handles the deployment part. It’s not that one is better than the other; it’s more about how they complement each other in a CI/CD pipeline.
That makes sense! So, in essence, they target different parts of the pipeline.
Here's a neat workflow: CodePipeline grabs your latest code from GitHub, triggers CodeBuild for building and testing it, and finally calls CodeDeploy to deploy that built code to your servers. So while CodePipeline orchestrates the whole process, CodeDeploy only handles the deployment. Also, I’m with you on wanting better support for multiple branches, as it’s a bit clunky in CodePipeline.
Honestly, I’d steer clear of both! There are easier methods out there. If you can, I'd use something as simple as a bash script before wrestling with either service. CodePipeline can manage multiple steps, sure, but it feels overly complicated at times.
CodePipeline is primarily an orchestration tool that manages a variety of CI/CD processes. You can configure it to handle builds, tests, deployments, and more, all by connecting to other services like CodeBuild for building and running tests, and CloudFormation for infrastructure provisioning. CodeDeploy, on the other hand, is a specialized tool focused on application deployments, like canary releases for Lambda functions. So, if you’re looking at broad orchestration, go for CodePipeline, but if your main need is managing deployments, CodeDeploy is a solid choice.
At a high level, CodeDeploy is like a postman that takes your code package from S3 and applies it to your servers at specific times. CodePipeline is more like a conductor that guides all the different steps in your deployment process, including fetching from S3, running tests, and then deploying with CodeDeploy. Keep in mind, I personally find neither tool ideal for all cases, as there have been feature limitations.
Exactly! Using them together gives you a complete solution.