GitHub Actions

This page contains easily customisable snippets to show you how to manage LocalStack in a GitHub Actions pipeline.

Snippets

Start up Localstack

- name: Start LocalStack
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  with:
    image-tag: 'latest'
    install-awslocal: 'true'

Configuration

To set LocalStack configuration options, you can use the configuration input parameter. For example, to set the DEBUG configuration option, you can use the following configuration:

- name: Start LocalStack
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  with:
    image-tag: 'latest'
    install-awslocal: 'true'
    configuration: DEBUG=1

You can add extra configuration options by separating them with a comma.

Configure a CI Auth Token

To enable LocalStack Pro, you need to add your LocalStack CI Auth Token to the project’s environment variables. The LocalStack container will automatically pick it up and activate the licensed features.

Go to the CI Auth Token page and copy your CI Auth Token. To add the CI Auth Token to your GitHub project, follow these steps:

• Navigate to your repository Settings > Secrets and press New repository secret.
• Enter LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN as the name of the secret and paste your CI Auth Token as the value. Click Add secret to save your secret.

You can then use our setup-localstack GitHub Action to start your LocalStack container, with the LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN environment variable:

- name: Start LocalStack
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.3
  with:
    image-tag: 'latest'
    install-awslocal: 'true'
    use-pro: 'true'
  env:
    LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN }}

Dump Localstack logs

- name: Show localstack logs
  run: |
    localstack logs | tee localstack.log

Store Localstack state

You can preserve your AWS infrastructure with Localstack in various ways.

Cloud Pods

...
# Localstack is up and running already
- name: Load the Cloud Pod
  continue-on-error: true  # Allow it to fail as pod does not exist at first run
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  with:
    state-backend: cloud-pods
    state-name: <cloud-pod-name>
    state-action: load
    skip-startup: 'true'

...

- name: Save the Cloud Pod
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  with:
    state-backend: cloud-pods
    state-name: <cloud-pod-name>
    state-action: save
...

Find more information about cloud pods here.

Ephemeral Instance (Preview)

Our Github Action contains the prebuilt functionality to spin up an ephemeral instance.

First you need to deploy the preview:

name: Create PR Preview

on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, synchronize, reopened]

jobs:
  test:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    timeout-minutes: 15
    permissions:
      pull-requests: write
    steps:
      ...

      - name: Deploy Preview
        uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
        env:
          AWS_DEFAULT_REGION: us-east-1
          AWS_REGION: us-east-1
          AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID: test
          AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY: test
        with:
          state-backend: ephemeral
          state-action: start
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          skip-ephemeral-stop: 'true' # We want our instance keep running
          preview-cmd: bin/deploy.sh

Find out more about ephemeral instances here.

Artifact

...
- name: Start LocalStack and Load State
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  continue-on-error: true  # Allow it to fail as pod does not exist at first run
  with:
    install-awslocal: 'true'
    state-backend: cloud-pods
    state-action: load
    state-name: my-ls-state
  env:
    LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN }}

...

- name: Save LocalStack State
  uses: LocalStack/setup-localstack@v0.2.2
  with:
    install-awslocal: 'true'
    state-backend: cloud-pods
    state-action: save
    state-name: my-ls-state
  env:
    LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.LOCALSTACK_AUTH_TOKEN }}
...

More information about state import and export here.

Current Limitations

Running Lambdas targeting the arm64 architecture

Deploying Lambdas targeting the arm64 architecture on GitHub Actions can pose challenges. While the LAMBDA_IGNORE_ARCHITECTURE configuration is an option for cross-architecture compatible Lambdas, it may not be suitable for statically compiled Lambdas. To address this, users are recommended to leverage Docker’s setup-qemu-action to enable emulation for the arm64 architecture. It’s important to note that using this approach may result in significantly slower build times.

Running LocalStack on Windows runners

LocalStack requires Docker to run, which is not natively supported on Windows runners. Windows runners don’t support Docker natively due to licensing restrictions. It is currently not possible to run LocalStack on Windows runners.