Stack names are not honoured when creating a nested stack

Stack names are not honoured when creating a multi-stack, multi-environment CDK application

Reproduction Steps

I am trying to create a CDK app with multiple stacks that is deployed to multiple environments, e.g.

#!/usr/bin/env node
import * as cdk from '@aws-cdk/core';
import * as s3 from '@aws-cdk/aws-s3';
import * as lambda from '@aws-cdk/aws-lambda';


class PersistenceStack extends cdk.Stack {
    public readonly bucket: s3.Bucket;
    constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
        super(scope, id, props);
        this.bucket = new s3.Bucket(this, 'bucket');
    }
}


interface ApplicationStackProps extends cdk.StackProps {
    bucket: s3.Bucket;
}


class ApplicationStack extends cdk.Stack {
    constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props: ApplicationStackProps) {
        super(scope, id, props);
        const myLambda = new lambda.Function(this, 'my-lambda', {
            runtime: lambda.Runtime.NODEJS_12_X,
            code: new lambda.AssetCode('my-lambda'),
            handler: 'index.handler'
        });
        props.bucket.grantReadWrite(myLambda);
    }
}


class MyApp extends cdk.Construct {

    constructor(scope: cdk.Construct, id: string, props: cdk.StackProps) {
        super(scope, id);

        const persistenceStack = new PersistenceStack(this, 'persistence-stack', {
            ...props,
            description: 'persistence stack',
            stackName: `${id}-persistence-stack`,
        });

        const applicationStack = new ApplicationStack(this, 'application-stack', {
            ...props,
            description: 'application stack',
            stackName: `${id}-application-stack`,
            bucket: persistenceStack.bucket,
        });
        applicationStack.addDependency(persistenceStack);
    }
}


const app = new cdk.App();

new MyApp(app, `test`, { env: { account: '111111111111', region: 'eu-west-1' } });
new MyApp(app, `prod`, { env: { account: '222222222222', region: 'eu-west-1' } });

Expected result

I expected to see “nice” (or at least predictable) stack names when executing $ npx cdk synth since I have specified the stackName properties when calling the constructors, e.g.

Successfully synthesized to [...]/my-app/cdk.out
Supply a stack id (prodpersistencestack, testpersistencestack, prodapplicationstack, testapplicationstack) to display its template.

Actual result

Stack names ends with random / hashed characters similar to:

Successfully synthesized to [...]/my-app/cdk.out
Supply a stack id (prodpersistencestackFE36DF49, testpersistencestack6C35C777, prodapplicationstackA0A96586, testapplicationstackE19450AB) to display its template.

Motivation

I need “nice” (or at least predictable) stack names to feed into the next step our CI/CD pipeline so that I can configure the build server to deploy the CDK app, e.g.

npx cdk deploy \
    --app cdk.out \
    --require-approval never \
   testpersistencestack 

npx cdk deploy \
    --app cdk.out \
    --require-approval never \
   testapplicationstack

Environment

• CLI Version: 1.21.1 (build 842cc5f)
• Framework Version: 1.21.1
• OS: macOS Catalina Version 10.15.2
• Language: TypeScript

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This is 🐛 Bug Report

[laimonassutkus]

This is straight-up bullshit that you can not simply force “normal” ids in your cdk application. Bad design choice.

[ekeyser]

Technically, it’s horsesht, not bulls#t. Bullsh#$ would imply it’s a lie.