Claudia requires aws-sdk dependency, AWS does not

• Expected behaviour:

Claudia should create or update a function that uses aws-sdk without it being installed in node_modules, especially when using the --use-local-dependencies flag.

Lambda provides this dependency as part of the environment, so not installing it saves lambda disk space, and this practice is encouraged by Amazon. Clauda should not require that it is installed.

• What actually happens:

Error: Cannot find module 'aws-sdk'
    ...
cannot require ./lambda after clean installation. Check your dependencies.

• Steps to reproduce the problem:

Use aws-sdk as a devDependency, and try to update.

[kyeotic]

I’m sure there are several solutions I as an app developer can implement to make a Lambda claudia-complaint. My point was that claudia should be able to handle any node lambda that runs in AWS. There shouldn’t be claudia-specific constraints. Its your tool and you can decide that this case is too much work for Claudia to try to tackle.

WHY USE CLAUDIA? AWS Lambda and API Gateway are incredibly flexible, but they can be tedious to set up, especially for simple scenarios. Running Node.js functions requires you to iron out quite a few quirks, that aren’t exactly well documented. Claudia automates all those steps for you.

It’s just a little surprising to read that, and then read that I need to write special code for an otherwise functional lambda to be deployed using Claudia.

[gojko]

Claudia uses its dependencies locally, and you should not include Claudia as a production dependency, only as a development one. Claudi Bot builder does not use aws-sdk, so it does not need it.

If your code requires aws-sdk, and you do not want to deploy it, use it as an optional dependency (npm install aws-sdk -O) and then deploy using --no-optional-dependencies, this will exclude AWS SDK from the final package.

--use-local-dependencies just copies whatever you have locally. It’s your job then to make sure development dependencies are not installed.