What is AWS CodeCommit?

AWS CodeCommit is a fully managed AWS service that allows teams of developers to securely store, track, and manage changes to their code repositories. It also makes it easier for them to collaborate efficiently and develop the source codeSource code simply refers to the collection of files and directories that make up the codebase of a software application. of their application software.

Before exploring CodeCommit, let’s refresh our concepts of version control systems and Git repositories.

Version control systems

Version control is the practice of tracking all changes to a source code repository over a period and resolving any conflicts that emerge from multiple developers merging their code with the source code. Hence, any systems used for managing version control of source code repositories are, in essence, also known as version control systems.

Version control systems (VCS), or source control systems, are software tools developers use to track and manage periodic changes to a software application’s code. AWS also provides the CodeCommit service, which is a version control system.

What are Git repositories?

Now that we’ve developed some understanding of version control systems let’s briefly define a Git repository.

A Git repository is a centralized storage location where developers can use the Git version control system to manage and track changes in their source code. It’s important to learn about Git repositories because, like most other version control systems, CodeCommit is responsible for managing and hosting them.

Introduction to CodeCommit

Now that we’ve understood the CodeCommit service let’s find out when we should use this service.

When to use the AWS CodeCommit service

The AWS CodeCommit service should primarily be used for storing files when we need to maintain several branches, references, and versions of those files and hence need a way to version control them.

For example, when working on a large software application project, developers need access to all Git branches when pushing and pulling code repositories, even if they’re primarily concerned with a single branch.

We won’t use a CodeCommit repository when storing extremely large files that constantly change. This is because CodeCommit would start taking a long time and computing power to process changes in large files, especially if several exist. Here the AWS S3 service would be best suited to store these files and also be able to version these.

As best practice, we would use the CodeCommit service when we need to manage changes from several developers across multiple files in parallel and the S3 service when we need to store large files and only require versioning for data recovery rather than collaborative file tracking.

Benefits of using CodeCommit

Here are some potential benefits of using CodeCommit to manage our source code:

• CodeCommit, a fully managed AWS service, allows us to avoid the costs of managing our software or hardware. AWS manages those aspects on the AWS cloud, so there are hardly any availability issues with using CodeCommit.

• CodeCommit allows us to securely store our code repositories, and all data transmissions are encrypted by default.

• CodeCommit allows us to easily collaborate with other developers when working on large shared projects where we must maintain several versions and branches.

• As everything is maintained on the cloud, there are hardly any availability issues with using CodeCommit, and we can store code of any size, anytime.

• We can easily scale up our CodeCommit repositories to meet our business and development requirements.

• CodeCommit is easy to integrate with other AWS services and even those from third-party sources.

• CodeCommit eases the migration process from other local and remote repositories as long as it is a Git-based repository.

• Integrating CodeCommit with any existing Git-based tools we may already be using is relatively easier.

How does CodeCommit work?

We can use the CodeCommit service on the AWS Management Console and the AWS CodeCommit CLI/SDK. We can also leverage and use Git commands to manage Git repositories hosted on CodeCommit. The illustration below provides an overview of what exactly we need to use to connect with, create, clone, push, and pull CodeCommit-hosted Git repositories:

Note: To learn more about creating and deploying CodeCommit repositories, read the How to create and deploy repositories with AWS CodeCommit Answer.

CodeCommit in a CI/CD pipeline

A CI/CD (continuous integration, continuous deployment) pipeline is a series of automated steps that builds, tests, and deploys code changes made by developers. AWS CodeCommit is one of the services that AWS offers to create a fully managed CI/CD pipeline on the AWS cloud. AWS CodeCommit, a version control system where the source code is stored, is the first “Source” stage in a CI/CD pipeline from where the updated source code is procured before being built, tested, and finally deployed.

Here’s a simple illustration of what a typical CI/CD pipeline on the AWS cloud would like utilizing only AWS services, which are all managed by AWS CodePipeline service:

Please note that the illustration above is just an example. We can mix and match third-party services in the stages with CodePipeline to create a CI/CD pipeline on the AWS Cloud. CodeCommit can also be used in the source stages of CI/CD pipelines that are outside of the AWS Cloud and not managed by AWS.

Short Quiz

In summary, AWS CodeCommit is a secure, scalable, and fully managed service from AWS that we can seamlessly integrate with the AWS ecosystem to streamline version control and collaborative development on the AWS Cloud.