Deploy on ECS with Escpresso

Introduction

This is template repository to create composite GitHub Actions. Feel free to use it as reference and starting point.

Usage

  name: Pull Request
  on:
    push:
      branches: [ 'main' ]

  jobs:
    context:
      runs-on: ubuntu-latest
      steps:
        - name: Example action
          uses: cloudposse/example-github-action-deploy-ecspresso@main
          id: example
          with:
            image: 1111111111111.dkr.ecr.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/cloudposse/example-app-on-ecs
            image-tag: latest
            region: us-east-2
            operation: deploy
            cluster: acme-plat-ue2-sandbox
            application: acme-plat-ue2-sandbox-example-app-on-ecs
            taskdef-path: taskdef.json

      outputs:
        result: ${{ steps.example.outputs.webapp-url }}

S3 Mirroring

S3 Mirroring is a pattern of uploading the deployed task definition to an S3 Bucket. This is so that the task definition can be updated with the latest image tag, and the terraform does not reset it back to a previous tag set in the infrastructure repository.

Partial Task Definition

A "Partial Task Definition" is an authoring pattern where the application repository maintains only the parts of the ECS task definition that the app team owns or changes frequently (for example, container image/tag, environment variables, command/args, CPU/memory for a container). The more static, infrastructure-owned parts (for example, IAM roles, volumes, EFS mounts, log configuration, task-level networking) are provided by a template maintained in the infrastructure repository.

During deployment, this action merges the infrastructure-provided template (optionally fetched from S3) with the local partial task definition from the application repo to produce a complete task-definition.json, which is then deployed by ecspresso.

Inputs

Name	Description	Default	Required
application	Application name	N/A	true
cluster	Cluster name	N/A	true
debug	Debug mode	false	false
ecspresso-version	Ecspresso version	v2.1.0	false
image	Docker image	N/A	true
image-tag	Docker image tag	N/A	true
mirror_to_s3_bucket	Mirror task definition to s3 bucket	N/A	false
operation	Operation (valid options - deploy, destroy)	deploy	true
region	AWS Region	N/A	true
taskdef-path	Task definition path	N/A	true
timeout	Ecspresso timeout	5m	false
use_partial_taskdefinition	NOTE: Experimental. Load templated task definition from S3 bucket, which is created by the ecs-service component. This is useful when you want to manage the task definition in the infrastructure repository and the application repository. The infrastructure repository manages things like Volumes and EFS mounts, and the Application repository manages the application code and environment variables.	N/A	false

Outputs

Name	Description
webapp-url	Web Application url

Related Projects

Check out these related projects.

References

For additional context, refer to some of these links.

• github-actions-workflows - Reusable workflows for different types of projects
• example-github-action-release-workflow - Example application with complicated release workflow

✨ Contributing

This project is under active development, and we encourage contributions from our community.

Many thanks to our outstanding contributors:

For 🐛 bug reports & feature requests, please use the issue tracker.

In general, PRs are welcome. We follow the typical "fork-and-pull" Git workflow.

1. Review our Code of Conduct and Contributor Guidelines.
2. Fork the repo on GitHub
3. Clone the project to your own machine
4. Commit changes to your own branch
5. Push your work back up to your fork
6. Submit a Pull Request so that we can review your changes

NOTE: Be sure to merge the latest changes from "upstream" before making a pull request!

Running Terraform Tests

We use Atmos to streamline how Terraform tests are run. It centralizes configuration and wraps common test workflows with easy-to-use commands.

All tests are located in the test/ folder.

Under the hood, tests are powered by Terratest together with our internal Test Helpers library, providing robust infrastructure validation.

Setup dependencies:

• Install Atmos (installation guide)
• Install Go 1.24+ or newer
• Install Terraform or OpenTofu

To run tests:

• Run all tests:

  atmos test run

• Clean up test artifacts:

  atmos test clean

• Explore additional test options:

  atmos test --help

The configuration for test commands is centrally managed. To review what's being imported, see the atmos.yaml file.

Learn more about our automated testing in our documentation or implementing custom commands with atmos.

🌎 Slack Community

Join our Open Source Community on Slack. It's FREE for everyone! Our "SweetOps" community is where you get to talk with others who share a similar vision for how to rollout and manage infrastructure. This is the best place to talk shop, ask questions, solicit feedback, and work together as a community to build totally sweet infrastructure.

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License

Preamble to the Apache License, Version 2.0

Complete license is available in the LICENSE file.

Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
distributed with this work for additional information
regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file
to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
"License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at

  https://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing,
software distributed under the License is distributed on an
"AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY
KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the
specific language governing permissions and limitations
under the License.

Trademarks

All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.

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