Feature Request: Support for Multi-stage Deployment via Artifact Creation and ZIP File Deployment

[masahif]

Problem

Currently, this action always creates a ZIP from code-artifacts-dir and immediately deploys to Lambda. This prevents multi-stage deployment workflows (dev → staging → prod) where the same artifact should be deployed across multiple environments.

Proposed Solution

Add two capabilities:

1. Artifact-only mode: Create and store deployment package without updating Lambda function
2. Deploy from ZIP file: Deploy using an existing ZIP file instead of building from source directory

Use Case

# Build phase - create artifact once
- name: Create deployment package
  uses: aws-actions/aws-lambda-deploy@v1
  with:
    code-artifacts-dir: dist/
    s3-bucket: deployment-bucket
    artifacts-only: true

# Deploy phase - use same artifact for multiple environments
- name: Deploy to production
  uses: aws-actions/aws-lambda-deploy@v1
  with:
    function-name: my-function-prod
    zip-file: path/to/package.zip

Benefits

• Enables standard multi-stage deployment patterns
• Ensures identical artifacts across environments
• Reduces build time for multiple deployment

[Iamrodos]

+1 to this. I would like to deploy from my own Zip file.

My use case is I have multiple lambda functions and my existing build script inside an action creates a zip file specific to each lambda. These are saved as a single artifact containing each of the zips.

So I don't want the zip created for me, just be able to pass the location of the zip, or even better if there was a way to take it from an actions artifact and provide the name of the file in the artifact.

[greyshi]

I agree with having an option to provide the Zip file.

For artifacts-only mode, would this only be useful for those using S3 buckets to store their code? Besides uploading to S3, in that mode the action would behave similarly to what dry run mode does currently.

[Iamrodos]

Re Zip file, this is the CLI command I would love to replace with the this action.

aws lambda update-function-code --function-name $STACK_LAMBDA_FUNCTION_NAME --zip-file fileb://lambda.zip --region $STACK_REGION

where lamba.zip is a file the action has access to. even better if it could us an artifact from a previous job.

If the action was in Python not node I would give it a go and create a pull request. Alas, I will have to rely on others. But my existing scripts work well enough, all be it not inside an action.

[masahif]

@geyshi Yes, artifact-only mode would be useful even with S3 deployment.

Key use cases:

• Multi-stage deployments: Deploy the same artifact to dev→staging→prod sequentially
• Monorepo scenarios: Share one build artifact across multiple Lambda functions
• Batch deployments: Update multiple functions with the same code simultaneously

Currently, the action creates ZIP and immediately deploys, making it impossible to reuse the same artifact for multiple targets.

Having S3 storage first, then deploying to multiple functions as needed would be very helpful.

[greyshi]

Supporting providing the Zip file should accommodate those use cases and we should do that.

Earlier I was trying to get at the fact that the artifact-only mode is only really applicable when the S3 option is being utilized. In Zip mode, there is no artifact to upload short of actually updating the function. Given that, if we adopt this option we should name it something like s3-artifact-only to make this clear it's an s3-specific option.

[masahif]

@greyshi Agreed! s3-artifact-only is a much better name - makes it clear it's S3-specific.