Packaging

Package CLI Command

Using the Serverless CLI tool, you can package your project without deploying it to AWS. This is best used with CI / CD workflows to ensure consistent deployable artifacts.

Running the following command will build and save all of the deployment artifacts in the service's .serverless directory:

serverless package

However, you can also use the --package option to add a destination path and Serverless will store your deployment artifacts there (./my-artifacts in the following case):

serverless package --package my-artifacts

Package Configuration

Sometimes you might like to have more control over your function artifacts and how they are packaged.

You can use the package and patterns configuration for more control over the packaging process.

Patterns

Patterns allows you to define globs that will be excluded / included from the resulting artifact. If you wish to exclude files you can use a glob pattern prefixed with ! such as !exclude-me/**. Serverless will run the glob patterns in order so you can always re-include previously excluded files and directories.

By default, serverless will exclude the following patterns:

  • .git/**
  • .gitignore
  • .DS_Store
  • npm-debug.log
  • yarn-*.log
  • .serverless/**
  • .serverless_plugins/**

and the serverless configuration file being used (i.e. serverless.yml). In addition, if useDotenv is set, all files satisfying pattern .env* will be excluded as well.

Examples

Exclude all node_modules but then re-include a specific modules (in this case node-fetch) using exclude exclusively

package:
  patterns:
    - '!node_modules/**'
    - 'node_modules/node-fetch/**'

Exclude all files but handler.js

package:
  patterns:
    - '!src/**'
    - src/function/handler.js

Note: Don't forget to use the correct glob syntax if you want to exclude directories

package:
  patterns:
    - '!tmp/**'
    - '!.git/**'

Artifact

For complete control over the packaging process you can specify your own artifact zip file. Serverless won't zip your service if this is configured and therefore patterns will be ignored. Either you use artifact or patterns.

The artifact option is especially useful in case your development environment allows you to generate a deployable artifact like Maven does for Java.

Service package

service: my-service
package:
  artifact: path/to/my-artifact.zip

Individual function packages

You can also use this to package functions individually:

service: my-service

package:
  individually: true

functions:
  hello:
    handler: com.serverless.Handler
    package:
      artifact: hello.jar
    events:
      - httpApi: 'GET /hello'

Artifacts hosted on S3

Artifacts can also be fetched from a remote S3 bucket. In this case you just need to provide the S3 object URI (old style or new) as the artifact value. This applies to both, service-wide and function-level artifact setups.

Note: At this time, only S3 URIs are supported. Serverless does not yet support fetching artifacts from non-S3 remote locations.

Service package
service: my-service

package:
  artifact: s3://some-bucket/path/to/service-artifact.zip
Individual function packages
service: my-service

package:
  individually: true

functions:
  hello:
    handler: com.serverless.Handler
    package:
      artifact: s3://some-bucket/path/to/service-artifact.zip

Packaging functions separately

If you want even more controls over your functions for deployment you can configure them to be packaged independently. This allows you more control for optimizing your deployment. To enable individual packaging set individually to true in the service or function wide packaging settings.

Then for every function you can use the same patterns or artifact config options as you can service wide. The patterns option will be merged with the service wide options to create one patterns config per function during packaging.

service: my-service
package:
  individually: true
  patterns:
    - '!excluded-by-default.json'
functions:
  hello:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      # We're including this file so it will be in the final package of this function only
      patterns:
        - excluded-by-default.json
  world:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      patterns:
        - '!some-file.js'

You can also select which functions to be packaged separately, and have the rest use the service package by setting the individually flag at the function level:

service: my-service
functions:
  hello:
    handler: handler.hello
  world:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      individually: true

Development dependencies

Serverless will auto-detect and exclude development dependencies based on the runtime your service is using.

This ensures that only the production relevant packages and modules are included in your zip file. Doing this drastically reduces the overall size of the deployment package which will be uploaded to the cloud provider.

You can opt-out of automatic dev dependency exclusion by setting the excludeDevDependencies package config to false:

package:
  excludeDevDependencies: false
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Packaging

Package CLI Command

Using the Serverless CLI tool, you can package your project without deploying it to AWS. This is best used with CI / CD workflows to ensure consistent deployable artifacts.

Running the following command will build and save all of the deployment artifacts in the service's .serverless directory:

serverless package

However, you can also use the --package option to add a destination path and Serverless will store your deployment artifacts there (./my-artifacts in the following case):

serverless package --package my-artifacts

Package Configuration

Sometimes you might like to have more control over your function artifacts and how they are packaged.

You can use the package and patterns configuration for more control over the packaging process.

Patterns

Patterns allows you to define globs that will be excluded / included from the resulting artifact. If you wish to exclude files you can use a glob pattern prefixed with ! such as !exclude-me/**. Serverless will run the glob patterns in order so you can always re-include previously excluded files and directories.

By default, serverless will exclude the following patterns:

  • .git/**
  • .gitignore
  • .DS_Store
  • npm-debug.log
  • yarn-*.log
  • .serverless/**
  • .serverless_plugins/**

and the serverless configuration file being used (i.e. serverless.yml). In addition, if useDotenv is set, all files satisfying pattern .env* will be excluded as well.

Examples

Exclude all node_modules but then re-include a specific modules (in this case node-fetch) using exclude exclusively

package:
  patterns:
    - '!node_modules/**'
    - 'node_modules/node-fetch/**'

Exclude all files but handler.js

package:
  patterns:
    - '!src/**'
    - src/function/handler.js

Note: Don't forget to use the correct glob syntax if you want to exclude directories

package:
  patterns:
    - '!tmp/**'
    - '!.git/**'

Artifact

For complete control over the packaging process you can specify your own artifact zip file. Serverless won't zip your service if this is configured and therefore patterns will be ignored. Either you use artifact or patterns.

The artifact option is especially useful in case your development environment allows you to generate a deployable artifact like Maven does for Java.

Service package

service: my-service
package:
  artifact: path/to/my-artifact.zip

Individual function packages

You can also use this to package functions individually:

service: my-service

package:
  individually: true

functions:
  hello:
    handler: com.serverless.Handler
    package:
      artifact: hello.jar
    events:
      - httpApi: 'GET /hello'

Artifacts hosted on S3

Artifacts can also be fetched from a remote S3 bucket. In this case you just need to provide the S3 object URI (old style or new) as the artifact value. This applies to both, service-wide and function-level artifact setups.

Note: At this time, only S3 URIs are supported. Serverless does not yet support fetching artifacts from non-S3 remote locations.

Service package
service: my-service

package:
  artifact: s3://some-bucket/path/to/service-artifact.zip
Individual function packages
service: my-service

package:
  individually: true

functions:
  hello:
    handler: com.serverless.Handler
    package:
      artifact: s3://some-bucket/path/to/service-artifact.zip

Packaging functions separately

If you want even more controls over your functions for deployment you can configure them to be packaged independently. This allows you more control for optimizing your deployment. To enable individual packaging set individually to true in the service or function wide packaging settings.

Then for every function you can use the same patterns or artifact config options as you can service wide. The patterns option will be merged with the service wide options to create one patterns config per function during packaging.

service: my-service
package:
  individually: true
  patterns:
    - '!excluded-by-default.json'
functions:
  hello:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      # We're including this file so it will be in the final package of this function only
      patterns:
        - excluded-by-default.json
  world:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      patterns:
        - '!some-file.js'

You can also select which functions to be packaged separately, and have the rest use the service package by setting the individually flag at the function level:

service: my-service
functions:
  hello:
    handler: handler.hello
  world:
    handler: handler.hello
    package:
      individually: true

Development dependencies

Serverless will auto-detect and exclude development dependencies based on the runtime your service is using.

This ensures that only the production relevant packages and modules are included in your zip file. Doing this drastically reduces the overall size of the deployment package which will be uploaded to the cloud provider.

You can opt-out of automatic dev dependency exclusion by setting the excludeDevDependencies package config to false:

package:
  excludeDevDependencies: false