[ECR] Fails to deploy if ECR repository already exists

Reproduction Steps

import cdk = require('@aws-cdk/core');

import ecr = require('@aws-cdk/aws-ecr');

export class EcrStack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    const ecrRepo = new ecr.Repository(this, 'MyECRRepo', {
      repositoryName: 'my-ecr-repo'
    });

    new cdk.CfnOutput(this, 'MyECRRepoURI', {
      value: ecrRepo.repositoryUri,
    });
  }
}

Error Log

I see an error state the ECR Repository with name my-ecr-repo already exists and the CFN deployment cancels and rolls back.

Environment

• CLI Version :1.16.3
• Framework Version: 1.16.3
• OS : macOS
• **Language : typescript **

Other

This is 🐛 Bug Report

[J11522]

@rix0rrr Could you provide a best-practice on how to approach a situation like this?

E.g. we want to setup a pipeline that pushes to ECR and have our deployment pull from ECR. Of course we can’t delete the repository when the pipeline is removed nor use dynamic names for the ECR as our deployment depends on this. Hence we would choose static names and only create a new ECR repository in the pipeline if one with the name doesn’t exist.

One common workaround found online is to query the ecr for existing repos, however this approach is of course not safe due to the async nature of synth and deploy. Furthermore this would introduce an anti-pattern as referenced here: https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/8273

Would this be addresses by the context provider framework?

Judging from the comments here and elsewhere, this seems like a common use case.

I’d be very curious to hear how this should ideally be approached.

[cmckni3]

Correct, this is the only place I specify a name.

I would imagine resource update would be skipped if the name is the same as the existing resource especially when nothing on the resource has changed in the updated template.

That seems like a CloudFormation issue in that case.