ECS Helper - A tool for managing the deployment process of an application in Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)

ECS Helper is a command-line tool written in Ruby that allows you to control the deployment process of your application in Amazon Elastic Container Service. The tool provides various commands for building and pushing images, deploying your application, exporting images, logging in to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR), running commands, exporting environment variables, and more. To use it an ECS Cluster with a service running there and have task_definitons is required. Docker images are stored in the ECR Elastic Container Registry.

To use ECS Helper, you need to install the ecs_helper gem. You can install it using the following command:

gem install ecs_helper

You can use the ecs_helper command followed by the desired command and arguments to control your application deployment process.

Alternatively, you can use the Docker image partos/ecs_toolbox. This image contains the ecs_helper gem and the AWS CLI tool. You can use the image to run the ecs_helper command in a container.

• build_and_push: builds and pushes the Docker image to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR).
• deploy: deploys the Docker image to Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS).
• export_images: exports Docker images to a file.
• ecr_login: logs in to Amazon Elastic Container Registry (ECR).
• run_command: runs a command in a container.
• export_env_secrets: exports environment variables to a file.
• exec: executes a command in a running container.
• check_exec: checks if the command in the running container was executed successfully.

You can select the desired command by passing the argument to the ecs_helper command. For example, to build and push an image with the tag api, you can use the following command:

ecs_helper build_and_push --image=api

ECS Helper can also be used in GitLab CI by using a pre-built Docker image. Here's an example of how to use ECS Helper in a GitLab CI pipeline:

stages:
  - build
  - deploy


variables:
  DOCKER_DRIVER: overlay2
  DOCKER_TLS_CERTDIR: ''
  DOCKER_IMAGE: docker:20.10.6
  PROJECT: test_project
  TOOLBOX_IMAGE: partos/ecs_toolbox:0.0.34
  AWS_REGION: us-east-1
  AWS_DEFAULT_REGION: us-east-1
  APPLICATION: app

.ci_deploy: &ci_deploy

only:
  - master
  - staging

build_app:
  <<: *ci_deploy
  stage: build
  image: $TOOLBOX_IMAGE
  script:
    - mkdir -p ./apps/api/dist/apps && cp -r ./dist/apps/api ./apps/api/dist/apps
    - ecs_helper build_and_push --image=api --cache -d ./apps/api

deploy_app:
  <<: *ci_deploy
  stage: deploy
  image: $TOOLBOX_IMAGE
  variables:
  APPLICATION: app
  script:
    - ecs_helper deploy --timeout 600

In this example, ECS Helper is used to build and push the api Docker image in the build_app job, and to deploy the application in the deploy_app job.

When a new version of an application is deployed, a new task definition revision is created in the target service.