aminator should support a simple return of the AMI ID in STDOUT after successful amination

[kvick]

When using aminator via scripts (e.g. Jenkins bash scripting) it's helpful to get the resultant AMI ID in STDOUT. Currently it is present, but buried in logging output.

The use case I have is I want to build automated acceptance tests, so I want to aminate a package, then launch an instance. The problem is that I don't have an easy way of getting the AMI ID to launch without parsing the logs or querying EC2, assuming I know the name (this is cumbersome).

I propose that aminator should so something like:

aminate -B ami-abcdefg --quiet
ami-123456

Where --quiet is whatever setting is needed to suppress console logging so we get only the successful AMI ID. If there's a failure, return a non-zero status and detailed STDERR output.

[bmoyles]

👍
I like the idea, although even from Jenkins (maybe especially from jenkins depending on perspective), I find it useful to get some kind of logging as an indicator of progress... That won't be super useful until #123 though

[robsweet]

I'm struggling with the same thing, kvick. How about a switch to write it to a file that can be saved as a build artifact? Maybe in a suitable format to feed into another build via EnvInject?

[kvick]

@robsweet I'm inclined to keep it simple in the first pass.

With the current implementation, I've been saving the AMI ID as a file (e.g. content AMI_ID=ami-xxxxxxx) and saving that as a build artifact that other jobs can source in if needed (plus they can then pin to a specific build/AMI ID, last build marked keep for ever, yada yada)

As you're painfully aware, having the ID is 1/2 the battle...

[grahamlyons]

Did this get any further? More machine-readable output would be useful.

[edsplunk]

+1 This would be useful and would save us some logfile parsing.