feat(pipelines): add support for CodePipeline namespaced variables

[igilham]

Firstly, I'm new to this project. I'm not used to the contributing guide and PR rules etc. and I don't expect this to work immediately. I also haven't set up a working build environment yet. This is all coming from a position of ignorance with the hope that it can become useful.

My team is attempting to build a pipeline that needs to pass a version number from one step to another using an exported environment variable. For this to work, the CodeBuildStep needs to support variablesNamespace similar to CodeBuildAction in @aws-cdk_aws-codepipeline-actions.

There are a couple of open issues talking about this and an existing PR which may be a little out of date now. I've borrowed from #15964 (by @berenddeboer) to implement the changes and addressed the request for a variable method in CodeBuildStep. I'm not certain if that existing PR is still being worked on.

Ideally, I'd like to get some feedback on how to proceed before investing much time in locking-in this approach by modifying tests and documentation. I've written a few questions, below, but feel free to raise any issues you can see.

To do:

• Add variablesNamespace to CodeBuildStep
• Add variable function to get a fully qualified CodePipeline variable name from CodeBuildStep instances
• Add support for variables namespace to CodeBuild factory
• Update existing affected tests, specifically the integration tests
• Add tests around the variable method
• Update relevant documentation

Open questions

• Is it safe to always define variablesNamespace or do we need to maintain the current behaviour of keeping it undefined by default?
• Is the approach taken to automatically define the namespace name sufficiently unique?
• Do we need to allow the user to specify their own namespace?

Fixes #15943

Partially addresses #16407

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By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution is made under the terms of the Apache-2.0 license

[gitpod-io]

[aws-cdk-automation]

AWS CodeBuild CI Report

• CodeBuild project: AutoBuildProject89A8053A-LhjRyN9kxr8o
• Commit ID: 03e9861
• Result: SUCCEEDED
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[igilham]

Looks like there's either no interest in addressing this issue or no time to consider it at present.

My team has abandoned CDK Pipelines due to it missing features we need.

[rix0rrr]

Apparently PR is abandoned.

[markusl]

@rix0rrr would you be able to merge this PR as it is highly relevant for other customers?

To me, it sounds weird that there is a PR specifically requested by the AWS CDK team, and then nothing is done for the PR for a month, and after that, it is labeled as "abandoned".

Please correct me if there is a misunderstanding related to this issue.

Best Regards,
Markus

[igilham]

I am not the one who abandoned it. The CDK team has so far ignored it and the request for feedback.

Several implementations of this feature are possible and I wanted to get some consensus on the approach before spending a lot of time polishing it. Since there has been no response of any kind, it seems I was wise not to waste too much time on it.

[igilham]

Is there an interest in picking this back up? The open questions and request for feedback are still unanswered at present.