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CI/CD for Python on Elastic Beanstalk

This tutorial shows how to automate deployments by promoting Elastic Beanstalk application versions through pipeline stages. It covers AWS-native pipeline components and a GitHub Actions packaging pattern.

Prerequisites

  • Existing Elastic Beanstalk application and environment.
  • Source bundle process that produces deterministic zip artifacts.
  • Access to CodePipeline, CodeBuild, and S3 in your AWS account.

What You'll Build

You will build a release process that:

  • Packages source into a versioned bundle.
  • Registers or deploys a specific application version.
  • Uses pipeline stages for source, build, and deploy.
  • Supports optional GitHub Actions automation while keeping AWS deployment API as source of truth.

Steps

  1. Define a version label format that is unique and traceable.
export VERSION_LABEL="python-$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)"
  1. Build source artifact and upload to S3.
zip -r "$VERSION_LABEL.zip" . -x ".git/*" ".venv/*"
aws s3 cp "$VERSION_LABEL.zip" "s3://$ARTIFACT_BUCKET/$VERSION_LABEL.zip" --region "$REGION"
  1. Create an Elastic Beanstalk application version.
aws elasticbeanstalk create-application-version --application-name "$APP_NAME" --version-label "$VERSION_LABEL" --source-bundle S3Bucket="$ARTIFACT_BUCKET",S3Key="$VERSION_LABEL.zip" --region "$REGION"
  1. Deploy that exact version to the environment.
aws elasticbeanstalk update-environment --environment-name "$ENV_NAME" --version-label "$VERSION_LABEL" --region "$REGION"

  1. In CodePipeline, connect stages:

  2. Source stage (repository or artifact feed).

  3. Build stage (CodeBuild package and validate).

  4. Deploy stage (Elastic Beanstalk deploy action).

  5. Optional GitHub Actions workflow can call AWS CLI with long flags and OIDC role assumption.

name: deploy-eb-python
on:
    workflow_dispatch:
jobs:
    deploy:
        runs-on: ubuntu-latest
        steps:
            - uses: actions/checkout@v4
            - name: Configure AWS credentials
              uses: aws-actions/configure-aws-credentials@v4
              with:
                  role-to-assume: arn:aws:iam::<account-id>:role/github-actions-eb
                  aws-region: ap-northeast-2
            - name: Build source bundle
              run: zip -r bundle.zip . -x ".git/*" ".venv/*"

flowchart LR
    A[Commit or Manual Trigger] --> B[Build Artifact]
    B --> C[S3 Versioned Bundle]
    C --> D[Create Application Version]
    D --> E[Update Environment]
    E --> F[Health and Event Validation]

Verification

Use AWS APIs to verify exact version promotion:

aws elasticbeanstalk describe-application-versions --application-name "$APP_NAME" --version-labels "$VERSION_LABEL" --region "$REGION"
aws elasticbeanstalk describe-environments --application-name "$APP_NAME" --region "$REGION"
eb events "$ENV_NAME"

Expected checks:

  • Version label exists and points to the intended source bundle.
  • Environment reports the same deployed version label.
  • Event stream confirms successful deployment lifecycle.

See Also

Sources