If Docker is not installed locally, CDK deploy can fail without a constructive error message (possibly related to Fargate use)

I have been building an app in CDK (lambda, fargate, sqs) with some success. I moved laptops for development, and while I installed CDK, AWS CLI etc etc, I did not install Docker as it did not seem required.

When trying to edit and deploy the app, I received an indistinct error while uploading assets:

> cdk "deploy"
FargateTaskRunnerDemoStack: deploying...
[0%] start: Publishing 0292d7d7c3f136659900411d2bec852eaf37d05f9e4b76cf33eb64270417463a:current
[50%] success: Published 0292d7d7c3f136659900411d2bec852eaf37d05f9e4b76cf33eb64270417463a:current
[50%] start: Publishing f78183504c75718fb00baea6f901199db893eddc04d21e426e8cad10f1f021a0:current
[100%] fail: write EPIPE
 ❌  FargateTaskRunnerDemoStack failed: Error: Failed to publish one or more assets. See the error messages above for more information.

It took a while to understand that this was because Docker was not installed or available.

Conversely, if Docker is installed but not enabled, then the error case is more descriptive:

[50%] start: Publishing 7a1e3989751f91a191cd33edf97f22ef63c06ad34f01895a7af11a3e32e3a97a:current
Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?
[100%] fail: docker build --tag cdkasset-7a1e3989751f91a191cd33edf97f22ef63c06ad34f01895a7af11a3e32e3a97a . exited with error code 1

I’m not expert enough to know whether this is due to the use of Fargate within the application itself, but a more useful error message in the first example would have really helped!

Reproduction Steps

• Be on MacOS
• Install CDK, AWS CLI
• Do not install Docker
• Try to build application (possibly dependent on use of FargateTaskDefinition() )
• Receive indistinct error message

Error Log

[50%] start: Publishing f78183504c75718fb00baea6f901199db893eddc04d21e426e8cad10f1f021a0:current
[100%] fail: write EPIPE
 ❌  FargateTaskRunnerDemoStack failed: Error: Failed to publish one or more assets. See the error messages above for more information.

In a way it’s the lack of errors that is the problem! 😃

Environment

• CLI Version : 2.0.14
• Framework Version: 1.36.0
• OS : MacOS 10.15.4
• Language : English

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This is 🐛 Bug Report

[davidwhewell]

That all makes sense and is fair enough - false positives definitely do not help while debugging.

If a specific error message can’t be added for this situation, hopefully having it on this page is enough for someone to find when they come across it later on!

[davidwhewell]

If this is regarding the message due to the lack of a Docker installation, installing Docker on the local machine would resolve the issue.

If it is about a general EPIPE error without context (such as is given without Docker being installed), then I agree right now it is hard to know where to start looking!

On Fri, 12 Jun 2020 at 09:04, Dzhuneyt [e-mail] wrote:

We just encountered this and after reading the comments here, it’s still not very clear how to solve this issue (or at least start debugging). Do you have any suggestions on where to start looking?

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