Installing Node.Js 18 in AWS CodeBuild using the Ubuntu build image

Node.Js and AWS CodeBuild

AWS CodeBuild is a fully managed build service that can compile source code, run tests, and produce software packages that are ready to deploy. It provides a wide range of pre-built build environments for popular programming languages, frameworks, and tools, including Node.js.

Node.js is a popular open-source JavaScript runtime built on Chrome’s V8 JavaScript engine. It allows developers to build fast, scalable, and highly performant server-side applications using JavaScript. The latest stable version of Node.js is 18.x, which was released on April 19, 2022.

Why Ubuntu not Amazon Linux 2 images?

Amazon Linux 2 is a Linux distribution that is designed to work seamlessly with AWS services. However, it is based on the CentOS/RHEL Linux distribution, which has a slower release cycle for new software versions compared to other Linux distributions. This means that Amazon Linux 2 may not have the latest version of some software packages, including Node.js.

In this article, we’ll learn how to install Node.js 18 with available images in AWS CodeBuild.

Step 1: Create a CodeBuild project

To get started, log in to the AWS Management Console and navigate to the AWS CodeBuild service. Click on the “Create project” button to create a new CodeBuild project.

Give your project a meaningful name, and choose the source code provider, source code location, and build environment. For this example, we’ll use the default “Ubuntu” environment with image identifier “aws/codebuild/standard:6.0”.

Step 2: Specify the build commands

In the “Buildspec” section of your CodeBuild project configuration, you can specify the build commands that CodeBuild should run. We’ll use the following commands to install Node.js 18:

version: 0.2
phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - echo "Installing Node.js 18"
      - n 18
  build:
    commands:
      - echo "Build commands go here"

The commands section runs the echo command to indicate that we're installing Node.js 18 and then installs it using n 18 command.

You can replace the echo command in the build phase with your own build commands, such as npm install or yarn build.

Step 3: Start the build

Once you’ve specified the build commands in your CodeBuild project, you can start a new build by clicking on the “Start build” button. CodeBuild will spin up a new instance of the build environment, install Node.js 18, and run the build commands.

After the build completes, you can view the build logs to see the output of the build commands. If there were any errors or warnings, you can use the logs to diagnose the issue and make any necessary changes to your build commands.

Conclusion

In this article, we learned how to install Node.js 18 with available images in AWS CodeBuild. By using the install phase in your buildspec, you can easily install any version of Node.js that is available in the CodeBuild environment.

While Amazon Linux 2 does not currently support Node.js 18, we can still use AWS CodeBuild to install Node.js 18 by using a different build image. By following the steps outlined above, you can easily install Node.js 18 in AWS CodeBuild and use it to build and test your Node.js applications. With Node.js 18, you can take advantage of its new features and improvements to build faster and more efficient applications.