[cdk-pipelines] unable to determine cloud assembly output directory. Assets must be defined indirectly within a "Stage" or an "App" scope .

When attempting to implement the cdk pipeline example found in this blog post, several of us have gotten the error unable to determine cloud assembly output directory. Assets must be defined indirectly within a “Stage” or an “App” scope . once the addApplicationStage step is added to the code.

import { CdkpipelinesDemoStage } from './cdkpipelines-demo-stage';

// ...

// This is where we add the application stages
pipeline.addApplicationStage(new CdkpipelinesDemoStage(this, 'PreProd', {
  env: { account: 'ACCOUNT1', region: 'us-east-2' }
}));

The Question

What is the meaning of this error ? It isn’t clear at all what one should do to solve it.

Environment

• CDK CLI Version: 1.57

• Language: TypeScript

[billmcknight1953]

Based on experimentation, we determined this error is due to their being a subtle difference in the list of cdk packages in the package json. Specifically we had aws-cdk/core set to “1.57.0” whereas the other aws-cdk pacakges being used were set to version “^1.57.0”. Correcting this mismatch, deleting the node_modules and the package.lock.json, and performing a new npm install fixed the issue. I would say though that the error message here isn’t all that helpful, and may be misleading.

[colvint]

This worked for me (on my local machine):

1. Delete node_modules and package-lock.json (alternatively I’d think npm ci would do the same)
2. npm i
3. cdk synth to verify. This yielded an actual error in my λ definition. Since I’d shuffled directories around for tidiness, I’d neglected to adjust the path to my λ code (an error which didn’t surface before steps 1 & 2)
4. Fixed the error, commit and push

Pipeline “build” step (synth) happy again!