Setting Up the Prerequisites

This chapter explains how to install and configure AWS SAM (Serverless Application Model) command-line tools and prerequisites.

The AWS SAM #

The AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) is a set of products that simplify developing, testing, and deploying applications using AWS Lambda. One part of SAM runs on developer machines and build servers, helping to prepare for deployment. Another aspect of SAM runs in AWS data centres during the deployment process. Unfortunately, as is the case with much AWS software, these products have overlapping names. Nobody outside Amazon really cares too much about the distinction, so informally they all get called SAM. Although it is possible to use different SAM products separately, in most cases they work together, so a clean separation between them isn’t especially important. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to set up the first part of SAM, which runs on developer machines.

This product was previously called ‘SAM-local’, and today AWS documentation calls it the SAM Command Line Interface (SAM CLI).

The main command-line tool which you’ll be installing and executing is just called sam. In the next chapter, you will take a deeper look at the part of SAM that runs remotely in ...