Allow packaging of static files alongside binary

💡 Feature description

It would be nice if it was possible to use the include and exclude package configuration in serverless.yml to choose other files to bundle with the bootstrap binary. For example to include a .env file that is then read by the dotenv crate at runtime.

I am sure that there are other use cases for including files other than the binary but that is the one that sprang to mind.

[nickspell]

An alternative solution to the static file packaging problem is to use AWS Lambda Layers. Just put your static files into some directory at the root of your project and create a layer from that.

Example:

myservice
├── static
│   ├── foo.json
├── src
├── serverless.yml

In your serverless.yml insert:

layers:
  mydata:
    path: static
    description: My static json data

In your function you can put the dependency on your layer as a title cased reference:

functions:
  myfunction:
    handler: #...
    layers: 
       - {Ref: MydataLambdaLayer}
     # .....

You can now access your files as if they are located in the “/opt” folder of your lambda, e.g.:

let file = File::open("/opt/foo.json")?;

This solution is quite useful especially when you want to share your static data between different lambdas.

[softprops]

Without more expertise in opencv I cant gaurantee this will work but to answer the question about using layers to package host dependencies, that’s almost the sole use of layers https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-for-aws-lambda-use-any-programming-language-and-share-common-components/

That said this is likely an easier case for interpreted languages im not sure if you can package and dynamically link via env var with rust. I glanced through the opencv docs and there was some suggestions that you could