CodeBuild 2019 or "How I built perl for less than 3 cents"

This is my second (or third) dalliance with AWS CodeBuild.  I think I'm starting to like it now though.  I recently wrote a bash script to compile a version of perl to create Lambdas as part of my Perl Lambda project.  My so-called `make-a-perl` script will instantiate an EC2, download the perl source code, compile it, zip it up and copy it to an S3 bucket.

I suspected I could use AWS CodeBuild to do all of the aforementioned operations, but did not want to descend down the CodeBuild rabbit hole once more.  But alas, the temptation was just too much!

AWS CodeBuild - HowTo

Amazon Web Services' CodeBuild is a managed service that allows developers to build projects from source.

Typically CodeBuild is used as part of your CI/CD pipeline, perhaps along with other AWS tools like CodeCommit, CodePipeline and CodeDeploy.

This blog will explore the use of CodeBuild to build the Bedrock project and update a yum repository.  Along the way I'll detail some of the things I've learned and the path I took to automating the Bedrock build.

Part 2: Using AWS Simple Email Service (SES) for Inbound Mail

Delete, delete, delete, delete, forward...

In part one of my two part blog on Amazon's Simple Email Service, we set up the necessary resources to receive and process inbound email. In part two, we'll  create a worker that reads an SQS queue and forwards the mail to another email address.

Serving up POD & The five Cs of Good Documentation

I'm a fanatic about documentation.  As a developer that has been involved in creating tools for other developers all my career, I understand the importance of good documentation.  Creating good documentation is not easy, which is why so few people write good documentation.  Here's an easy to remember grading system for your documentation.  Does it meet the five Cs test?

 Is your documentation...

1. Correct
2. Complete
3. Comprehensible
4. Current
5. Convenient

I probably don't need to go into too much detail here, but if ain't complete, correct, comprehensible and current it may be worse than no documentation at all.  If it ain't convenient it really doesn't matter how correct, complete, comprehensible or current it is, now does it?  It's not easy meeting all 5 Cs all of the time.  Most likely your documentation will transition through various permutations of those Cs during the software development lifecycle.  So how can we at least make our documentation more convenient and accessible and at least allows us to make an attempt to meet the 5Cs?