Using AWS CodeCommit from Eclipse

Earlier this month, we launched AWS CodeCommit — a managed revision control service that hosts Git repositories and works with existing Git-based tools.

If you’re an Eclipse user, it’s easy to use the EGit tools in Eclipse to work with AWS CodeCommit. This post shows how to publish a project to AWS CodeCommit so you can start trying out the new service.

Configure SSH Authentication

To use AWS CodeCommit with Eclipse’s Git tooling, you’ll need to configure SSH credentials for accessing CodeCommit. This is an easy process you’ll only need to do once. The AWS CodeCommit User Guide has a great walkthrough describing the exact steps to create a keypair and register it with AWS. Make sure you take the time to test your SSH credentials and configuration as described in the walkthrough.

Create a Repository

Next, we’ll create a new Git repository using AWS CodeCommit. The AWS CodeCommit User Guide has instructions for creating repositories through the AWS CLI or the AWS CodeCommit console.

Here’s how I used the AWS CLI:

% aws --region us-east-1 codecommit create-repository 
      --repository-name MyFirstRepo 
      --repository-description "My first CodeCommit repository"
{
  "repositoryMetadata": {
    "creationDate": 1437760512.195,
    "cloneUrlHttp": 
       "https://git-codecommit.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/MyFirstRepo",
    "cloneUrlSsh": 
       "ssh://git-codecommit.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/v1/repos/MyFirstRepo",
    "repositoryName": "MyFirstRepo",
    "Arn": "arn:aws:codecommit:us-east-1:963699449919:MyFirstRepo",
    "repositoryId": "c4ed6846-5000-44ce-a808-b1862766d8bc",
    "repositoryDescription": "My first CodeCommit repository",
    "accountId": "963699449919",
    "lastModifiedDate": 1437760512.195
  }
}

Whether you use the CLI or the console to create your CodeCommit repository, make sure to copy the cloneUrlSsh property that’s returned. We’ll use that in the next step when we clone the CodeCommit repository to our local machine.

Create a Clone

Now we’re ready to use our repository locally and push one of our projects into it. The first thing we need to do is clone our repository so that we have a local version. In Eclipse, open the Git Repositories view (Window -> Show View -> Other…) and select the option to clone a Git repository.

In the first page of the Clone Git Repository wizard, paste the Git SSH URL from your CodeCommit repository into the URI field. Eclipse will parse out the connection protocol, host, and repository path.

Click Next. The CodeCommit repository we created is an empty, or bare, repository, so there aren’t any branches to configure yet.

Click Next. On the final page of the wizard, select where on your local machine you’d like to store the cloned repository on your local machine.

Push to Your Repository

Now that we’ve got a local clone of our repository, we’re ready to start pushing a project into it. Select a project and use Team -> Share to connect that project with the repository we just cloned. In my example, I simply created a new project.

Next use Team -> Commit… to make the initial check-in to your cloned repo.

Finally, use Team -> Push Branch… to push the master branch in your local repository up to your CodeCommit repository. This will create the master branch on the CodeCommit repository and configure your local repo for upstream pushes and pulls.

Conclusion

Your project is now configured with the EGit tools in Eclipse and set up to push and pull from a remote AWS CodeCommit repository. You can take advantage of all the EGit tooling in Eclipse to work with your repository and easily push and pull changes from your AWS CodeCommit repository. Have you tried using AWS CodeCommit yet?