buildflow.yaml

The buildflow.yaml file is the only configuration file for your project. It defines the name of your project and the different stacks (group of resources) that your project manages.

When you run buildflow init a default buildflow.yaml file is created for you, and it will look something like:

project: hello
entry_point: main:app
pulumi_config:
    stacks:
    -   name: local
        backend_url: file://./.buildflow/_pulumi/local
    pulumi_home: ./.buildflow/_pulumi
build_ignores:
- my-large-file.bin

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Project

This is the name of your project. It can be any string containing lowercase letters and hyphens.

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Entry Point

The entry point defines how to run your project. This is what buildflow run and similar commands will use to execute your code.. If you ever rename you main file or update your flow definition you can update this field to ensure all of the buildflow cli still works as expected.

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Pulumi Configure

The pulumi config defines what stacks your project manages. Each stack is a group of resources that are deployed together. For example, you might have a stack for your dev environment and another for your production environment. By default we set up one stack for you that is stored locally. This stack is great for spinning up local dev environments, but you will likely want to add additional stacks that can be shared with your team.

To do this you can add a new stack with a remote backend_url. This can be an S3 Bucket, GCS Bucket, or you can use Pulumi cloud to store your state. You can read more about Pulumi backends here.

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S3 Remote state

To store your remote stack state in an S3 bucket you can use the following configuration:

project: hello
entry_point: main:app
pulumi_config:
    stacks:
    -   name: local
        backend_url: file://./.buildflow/_pulumi/local
    -   name: dev
        backend_url: s3://your-state-bucket-name
    pulumi_home: ./.buildflow/_pulumi

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GCS Remote state

To store your remote stack state in a GCS bucket you can use the following configuration:

project: hello
entry_point: main:app
pulumi_config:
    stacks:
    -   name: local
        backend_url: file://./.buildflow/_pulumi/local
    -   name: dev
        backend_url: gcs://your-state-bucket-name
    pulumi_home: ./.buildflow/_pulumi

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Referencing Different stacks

Which stack your project uses when you run buildflow run or similar commands is determined by the stack argument to FlowOptions. We find that it is often useful to set this variable via an environment variable making it easy to swap between your different stacks.

from buildflow import Flow, FlowOptions

flow = Flow(
    options=FlowOptions(
        stack=os.environ.get("STACK", "local")
    )
)

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Build Ignores

This is a list of files that should be ignored when building your project. You can use the same syntax as a .gitignore file. This is useful for large files that you don’t want to include in your build. For example, you might have a large binary file that is used by your application.