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Comment by kehers | Hacker News Reader

I've been using it for heavy background job for http://thefeed.press and overall, I think it's pretty ok (I use NodeJs). That said here are few things:

- No straight way to prevent retries. (Retries can crazily increase your bill if something goes wrong)

- API gateway to Lambda can be better. (For one, Multipart form-data support for API gateway is a mess)

- (For NodeJs) I don't see why the node_modules folder should be uploaded. (Google cloud functions downloads the modules from the package.json)

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> I don't see why the node_modules folder should be uploaded

So you don't end up with a leftpad-like event. Control and ship your dependencies.

But here's the fun part - if you want to just upload your code and make it download+deploy dependencies, you can do it using your own lambda function :-)

> I don't see why the node_modules folder should be uploaded.

Exactly! Especially if you're using modules that include some sort of binary and build your function on macOS it's a pain -- I ended up using a Docker-based workflow to get the correct binaries into the node_modules.

Or you can use CI to deploy.

Agreed regarding downloading of libraries. I tried to get a python torrent library working in lambda the other day, and I had to manually dig through my /usr/lib to find the right shared objects. Should be much easier than that, I should be able to place a language appropriate set of requirements in the zip root and it should do what it needs to do.

> should be able to place a language appropriate set of requirements in the zip root and it should do what it needs to do.

Let's say you depend on libfoo. It can be obtained via system package, built from sources (with 3 different feature switches), or your language's package can simulate the effect without the native libfoo but it will take longer. Why knows what "it needs to do"?

This is not something anyone but you can answer. There could be some nice wrapper that warns you about libraries you use, but you have to make the decision.

What do you mean by retries? Also, why would you upload node_modules? Why don't you build it first and only upload what is required...

> What do you mean by retries If there is an error, the function will be retried: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/retries-on-error...

> Why would you upload node_modules It is required to: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/lambda/latest/dg/nodejs-create-de...

The node_modules one is rubbish IMO, I think their doco is absurd. You can just compile things down using webpack or such, this makes the package smaller and can be optimized for faster execution as well.

The retry one is new to me, need to read more about it.

Thanks for the info.

Does webpack work for node.js code? I was under the impression that webpack was specifically for front end code.

Node.js code works for frontend code.

I've always built my lambdas before upload and never upload my node_modules folder. It also means that when you get an error, debugging can be tricky.

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