How to disable rollback in CDK pipelines.CodePipeline

Question

I have my production infrastructure deployed via CDK pipelines.CodePipeline. This is a CDK construct that uses AWS CodePipeline service to deploy CDK apps.

Since this is fully managed, I don't need to put cdk deploy command in the pipeline stage, and it automatically builds it for me.

Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have an option to disable auto-rollback. Does it?

My code:

from aws_cdk import pipelines

# ... builds cdk synth

pipeline = pipelines.CodePipeline(
    self,
    "Pipeline",
    cli_version=Toolchain._get_cdk_cli_version(),
    cross_account_keys=True,
    docker_enabled_for_synth=True,
    publish_assets_in_parallel=False,
    synth=synth,
)
production = cdk.Stage(
    pipeline,
    PRODUCTION_ENV_NAME,
    env=cdk.Environment(account=PRODUCTION_ENV_ACCOUNT, region=PRODUCTION_ENV_REGION),
)
Backend(
    production,
    constants.APP_NAME + PRODUCTION_ENV_NAME,
    env=cdk.Environment(account=PRODUCTION_ENV_ACCOUNT, region=PRODUCTION_ENV_REGION),
    stack_name=constants.APP_NAME + PRODUCTION_ENV_NAME,
    github_branch="production",
    image_tag="prod",
)
pipeline.add_stage(production)

Answer 1

This is not possible with CDK Pipelines. It does not use the CDK CLI (which has the --no-rollback flag) for deployment, instead using CodePipeline's integration with CloudFormation, which does not support disabling rollback. Here is the documentation on the available configuration options for CloudFormation actions in CodePipeline: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/action-reference-CloudFormation.html#action-reference-CloudFormation-type

And here is the relevant configuration options in CDK:

If useChangeSets is set to true: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/v2/docs/aws-cdk-lib.aws_codepipeline_actions.CloudFormationCreateReplaceChangeSetAction.html Otherwise: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/v2/docs/aws-cdk-lib.aws_codepipeline_actions.CloudFormationCreateUpdateStackAction.html

So you would not be able to achieve this even with escape hatches.

Answer 2

It looks like you should be able to do it by setting the rollback option in your cdk.json file:

rollback: If false, failed deployments are not rolled back.

The guide for CI/CD with CDK Pipelines says:

Be sure to commit your cdk.json and cdk.context.json files to source control.

So I'm pretty sure these options will also be used when deploying through the pipeline.