https://cloudposse.com logo
Join Slack
Powered by
Whelp! Another AWS CLI bites the dust! :headstone...
# aws
m
Whelp! Another AWS CLI bites the dust! 🪦 😅 Not too long ago I was extolling the benefits of using Rain, an AWS CLI for CloudFormation. I’ve made it a foundation of my workflows when I’m using pure CFN to deploy and manage resources on AWS. I was running 
brew doctor
today and saw the following:
Copy code
Warning: Some installed formulae are deprecated or disabled.
You should find replacements for the following formulae:
And lo and behold, 
rain
was in the list. Sure enough, the repo says:
Copy code
This repository was archived by the owner on Jul 29, 2026. It is now read-only.
---
Copy code
Warning

⚠️ This project is deprecated

Rain is no longer actively maintained and has been deprecated. We are no longer accepting feature requests, and issues and pull requests may not be reviewed or merged. The repository will remain available in an archived, read-only state so that existing users can continue to reference the source and prior releases.

Existing binaries and releases will continue to be available on the releases page, but no new releases, bug fixes, or security patches are planned.

We recommend migrating to actively supported alternatives such as the AWS CLI for CloudFormation operations, the AWS CDK for authoring reusable infrastructure components such as modules, cfn-lint for template validation, and cfn-guard for policy checks.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to and used Rain over the years.
So, i guess its time to fork 
rain
or vibe code a wrapper around the AWS CLI for CFN! 🤔 🤷🏾‍♂️
e
Hahahaha OMG
They killed 
rain
?
Every single CLI they develop that brings quality DX, they kill
We were debating adding CloudFormation into atmos, but was conflicted because rain was very similar to atmos.
Now, I think it makes sense to pull the trigger.
m
Nice! If you need some opinions from an avid rain user, I'm happy to help. 👏🏾
❤️ 1
e
What did you like the most (or use most), and what were the warts or things you disliked?
Do you use rain modules and the 
rain forecast
command?
m
Most of my use is in the 
stack
set of commands:
Copy code
Stack commands:
  cat         Get the CloudFormation template from a running stack
  cc          Interact with templates using Cloud Control API instead of CloudFormation
  deploy      Deploy a CloudFormation stack or changeset from a local template
  logs        Show the event log for the named stack
  ls          List running CloudFormation stacks or changesets
  rm          Delete a CloudFormation stack or changeset
  stackset    This command manipulates stack sets.
  watch       Display an updating view of a CloudFormation stack
I use these all day to deploy, update, and remove stacks. In the 
template
set of commands i’ve used 
fmt
and 
diff
Oh and 
merge
but rarely.
One of the things i disliked was not being able to get clean outputs (or any outputs for that matter) from the native 
rain
command. I use this instead:
Copy code
alias ,output="aws cloudformation describe-stacks --query \"Stacks[*].Outputs[*]\" --stack-name "
and pass in the stack name.
Oddly, rain has nice output UI/UX at the end of a deployment or update so I don’t know why that couldn’t include a native command to do the same.
p
What a shame that this has been discontinued! On the Atmos side, would there be more user interest in managing individual CloudFormation stacks, or StackSets? Hopefully this is not a silly question. With extended region support added to Terraform AWS provider v6, it's the multi-account aspect that still distinguishes CloudFormation StackSets (plus the optional, AWS-managed semantics: account joins or leaves org. or OU, StackSet instance is created or deleted automatically). A long-lived bug in the Terraform AWS provider makes some routine StackSet modifications painful, so external tooling could be useful.
👍🏾 1
2 Views
Open in Slack
PreviousNext
Powered by