EC2 Picture Builder now helps constructing and testing macOS photographs

I’m thrilled to announce macOS assist in EC2 Picture Builder. This new functionality permits you to create and handle machine photographs to your macOS workloads along with the prevailing assist for Home windows and Linux.

A golden picture is a bootable disk picture, additionally known as an Amazon Machine Picture (AMI), pre-installed with the working system and all of the instruments required to your workloads. Within the context of a steady integration and steady deployment (CI/CD) pipeline, your golden picture likely accommodates the precise model of your working system (macOS) and all required growth instruments and libraries to construct and check your purposes (Xcode, Fastlane, and so forth.)

Growing and manually managing pipelines to construct macOS golden photographs is time-consuming and diverts proficient sources from different duties. And when you might have present pipelines to construct Linux or Home windows photographs, you could use completely different instruments for creating macOS photographs, resulting in a disjointed workflow.

For these causes, a lot of you might have been asking for the power to handle your macOS photographs utilizing EC2 Picture Builder. You need to consolidate your picture pipelines throughout working techniques and reap the benefits of the automation and cloud-centered integrations that EC2 Picture Builder gives.

By including macOS assist to EC2 Picture Builder, now you can streamline your picture administration processes and cut back the operational overhead of sustaining macOS photographs. EC2 Picture Builder takes care of testing, versioning, and validating the bottom photographs at scale, saving you the prices related to sustaining your most popular macOS variations.

Let’s see it in motion
Let’s create a pipeline to create a macOS AMI with Xcode 16. You may comply with an identical course of to put in Fastlane in your AMIs.

At a excessive degree, there are 4 essential steps.

1. I outline a element for every instrument I need to set up. A element is a YAML doc that tells EC2 Picture Builder what software to put in and the way. On this instance, I create a customized element to put in Xcode. If you wish to set up Fastlane, you create a second element. I exploit the ExecuteBash motion to enter the shell instructions required to put in Xcode.
2. I outline a recipe. A recipe begins from a base picture and lists the elements I need to set up on it.
3. I outline the infrastructure configuration I need to use to construct my picture. This defines the pool of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) cases to construct the picture. In my case, I allocate an EC2 Mac Devoted Host in my account and reference it within the infrastructure configuration.
4. I create a pipeline and a schedule to run on the infrastructure with the given recipes and an picture workflow. I check the output AMI and ship it on the chosen vacation spot (my account or one other account)

It’s a lot simpler than it sounds. I’ll present you the steps within the AWS Administration Console. I can even configure EC2 Picture Builder with the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or write code utilizing one in every of our AWS SDKs.

Step 1: Create a element
I open the console and choose EC2 Picture Builder, then Parts, and eventually Create element.

I choose a base Picture working system and the Appropriate OS Variations. Then, I enter a Part title and Part model. I choose Outline doc content material and enter this YAML as Content material.

title: InstallXCodeDocument
description: This downloads and installs Xcode. Make sure you run `xcodeinstall authenticate -s us-east-1` out of your laptop computer first.
schemaVersion: 1.0

phases:
  - title: construct
    steps:
      - title: InstallXcode
        motion: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          instructions:
             - sudo -u ec2-user /decide/homebrew/bin/brew faucet sebsto/macos
             - sudo -u ec2-user /decide/homebrew/bin/brew set up xcodeinstall
             - sudo -u ec2-user /decide/homebrew/bin/xcodeinstall obtain -s us-east-1 --name "Xcode 16.xip"
             - sudo -u ec2-user /decide/homebrew/bin/xcodeinstall set up --name "Xcode 16.xip"
  
  - title: validate
    steps:
      - title: TestXcode
        motion: ExecuteBash
        inputs:
          instructions:
            -  xcodebuild -version && xcode-select -p   

I exploit a instrument I wrote to obtain and set up Xcode from the command line. xcodeinstall integrates with AWS Secrets and techniques Supervisor to securely retailer authentication internet tokens. Earlier than operating the pipeline, I authenticate from my laptop computer with the command xcodeinstall authenticate -s us-east-1. This command begins a session with Apple server’s and shops the session token in Secrets and techniques Supervisor. xcodeinstall makes use of this token throughout the picture creation pipeline to obtain Xcode.

Once you use xcodeinstall with Secrets and techniques Supervisor, you could give permission to your pipeline to entry the secrets and techniques. Right here is the coverage doc I added to the position connected to the EC2 occasion utilized by EC2 Picture Builder (within the following infrastructure configuration).

{
	"Sid": "xcodeinstall",
	"Impact": "Permit",
	"Motion": [
            "secretsmanager:GetSecretValue"
            "secretsmanager:PutSecretValue"
        ],
	"Useful resource": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-east-1:<YOUR ACCOUNT ID>:secret:xcodeinstall*"
}

To check and debug these elements domestically, with out having to attend for lengthy cycle to begin and recycle the EC2 Mac occasion, you need to use the AWS Activity Orchestrator and Executor (AWSTOE) command.

Step 2: Create a recipe
The subsequent step is to create a recipe. On the console, I choose Picture recipes and Create picture recipe.

I choose macOS as the bottom Picture Working System. I select macOS Sonoma ARM64 as Picture title.

Within the Construct elements part, I choose the Xcode 16 element I simply created throughout step 1.

Lastly, I make sure that the amount is giant sufficient to retailer the working system, Xcode, and my builds. I normally choose a 500 Gb gp3 quantity.

Steps 3 and 4: Create the pipeline (and the infrastructure configuration)
On the EC2 Picture Builder web page, I choose Picture pipelines and Create picture pipeline. I give my pipeline a reputation and choose a Construct schedule. For this demo, I choose a guide set off.

Then, I choose the recipe I simply created (Sonoma-Xcode).

I selected Default workflows for Outline picture creation course of (not proven for brevity).

I create or choose an present infrastructure configuration. Within the context of constructing macOS photographs, it’s a must to allocate Amazon EC2 Devoted Hosts first. That is the place I select the occasion kind that EC2 Picture Builder will use to create the AMI. I can also optionally choose my digital personal cloud (VPC), safety group, AWS Identification and Entry Administration (IAM) roles with permissions required throughout the preparation of the picture, key pair, and all of the parameters I normally choose once I begin an EC2 occasion.

Lastly, I choose the place I need to distribute the output AMI. By default, it stays on my account. However I can even share or copy it to different accounts.

Run the pipeline
Now I’m able to run the pipeline. I choose Picture pipelines, then I choose the pipeline I simply created (Sonoma-Xcode). From the Actions menu, I choose Run pipeline.

I can observe the progress and the detailed logs from Amazon CloudWatch.

After some time, the AMI is created and able to use.

Testing my AMI
To complete the demo, I begin an EC2 Mac occasion with the AMI I simply created (bear in mind to allocate a Devoted Host first or to reuse the one you used for EC2 Picture Builder).

As soon as the occasion is began, I connect with it utilizing safe shell (SSH) and confirm that Xcode is accurately put in.

Pricing and availability
EC2 Picture Builder for macOS is now obtainable in all AWS Areas the place EC2 Mac cases can be found: US East (Ohio, N. Virginia), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), and Europe (Frankfurt, Eire, London, Stockholm) (not all Mac occasion varieties can be found in all Areas).

It comes at no extra value, and also you’re solely charged for the sources in use throughout the pipeline execution, particularly the time your EC2 Mac Devoted Host is allotted, with a minimal of 24 hours.

The preview of macOS assist in EC2 Picture Builder permits you to consolidate your picture pipelines, automate your golden picture creation processes, and use the advantages of cloud-focused integrations on AWS. Because the EC2 Mac platform continues to increase with extra occasion varieties, this new functionality positions EC2 Picture Builder as a complete resolution for picture administration throughout Home windows, Linux, and macOS.

Create your first pipeline in the present day! 

— seb