Open source tool manages AWS Lambda apps

The open source tool deploys, runs, and manages AWS Lambda apps from the command line, even using apps written in languages not supported.

A new open source project from categorical and Node.js-canvas creator TJ Holowaychuk lets developers create, deploy, and manage AWS Lambda functions from a command-line tool.

Apex, written in Google's Go language, also makes it potential to run applications in languages not directly supported by AWS Lambda, such as Golang itself.

Apex deploys AWS Lambda functions via projects, aka collections of function definitions represented with JSON. It bundles all the needed dependencies and uploads them to AWS, and it automatically cleans up older or superannuated versions of functions. In a nod to putting together versioned APIs, Apex allows users to manually specify that versions of a given perform to retain.

An Apex project additionally supports hooks to enable capricious code to run throughout a build, deploy, or cleanup action. For instance, if you're deploying a Go program wrapped in AN Apex project, you can have the Go program remodeled right before the readying. In addition, Apex can set setting variables for a Lambda perform -- Amazon does not support that nonetheless.

To run applications not directly supported by AWS Lambda, Apex uses a Node.js shim mechanism, which is a little app that runs in a very kid method. Nearly any app that uses stdin/stdout should work as-is through the wedge, although they would like to log errors to stderr, and there may be a minor delay the primary time the perform is invoked.

Another open source project, Serverless (formerly Jaws), purports to cover several of constant tasks as Apex, but Apex claims Serverless cannot perform shimming "out of the box." Zappa, another similar project, is specifically aimed at hoisting Python applications onto AWS Lambda, while Apex is supposed to be a lot of general in use.