What's the future of AWS Copilot?

[afgallo]

Hi All,

I am not sure if it is just me but AWS Copilot doesn't seem to have a lot of traction these days.

This tool used to have a pretty good monthly release cycle and now it's been months since a release that was packed with new features such as https://github.com/aws/copilot-cli/releases/tag/v1.33.0.

Is this a tool that AWS is still investing resources at? Or is this simply a product that is considered "done"?

What can we expect from future improvements given the Roadmaps don't seem to be updated very often?

I run a few platforms in Production where we use Copilot and I was just wondering if I should be concerned at all.

Cheers,
Andre

[iamhopaul123]

Hello @afgallo. We are not actively developing any new features for Copilot but we still do maintenance work. Copilot is a client side tooling so ideally if you use any available version it should be stable enough for your prod application. There could be scenarios that a new dependency vulnerabilities has been uncovered for existing version and in that case we'll still fix any high severity security vulnerabilities and release ad hoc. Does that address your concern?

[afgallo]

Thanks @iamhopaul123. It's sad to see that there will be no further new development done in Copilot. I feel like there is a bunch of new features that could be added to make things even easier.

And yes, it addresses my question so my take away is that the tool is in maintenance only.

Cheers

[PedroAlvarado]

@iamhopaul123 It's important to make it clear that AWS Copilot is in maintenance mode, as this isn't obvious to newcomers. I suggest highlighting this prominently on the GitHub repo and website for the benefit of current and future users.

[hiroki-gota]

Agreed with others. We have 2 production workloads using CoPilot. We're also intending to use it for the next project and we're about to create a new instance. What is the official recommendation @iamhopaul123 for a new project? Is there an alternative recommended tool? including CDK?

[dfuentes77]

We should also point out the obvious to many of us, that there is a huge amount of documentation inside and outside of AWS docs, articles, blogs, instructions, that's still in place. The external stuff you can't change much but so much internal documentation (even in the AWS console) still points to AWS copilot. And if this project is officially in maintenance mode, all that documentation should have already changed, since that's leading new and current AWS users to an unexpected dead-end.

[gj02ib65]

I am supporting a customer that has used Copilot to deploy ECS solutions in 11 AWS accounts. We deployed this solution with CodeCommit and pipelines and it was great, but CodeCommit has been abandoned by AWS and now AWS Copilot.

I appreciate that you can say that Copilot it is functionally complete. I am amazed with the ability and adaptability to different deployment strategies, but I would like to see more commitment in the maintenance mode to maintain the functionality of Copilot as the underling services of AWS changes.

As AWS implements changes to services, I am starting to see cracks emerge in Copilot deployments. Yes, you can find ways to work around those, but I would like to see AWS continue to fund resources to fix those items one time in Copilot, rather than each customer needing to troubleshoot and patch around those issues.

@iamhopaul123 I would like to see an expanded definition of maintenance to include maintaining functionality of Copilot. I understand you may need to deprecate the ability of using CodeCommit for instance and that no new features will be added. But I would like to see continued support and maintenance of features of AWS Copilot by adapting to the changing AWS infrastructure.