Code build continues after build fails

Question

I'm building a CI/CD pipeline using git, codebuild and elastic beanstalk.

During codebuild execution when build fails due to syntax error of a test case, I see codebuild progress to next stage and ultimatly go on to produce the artifacts.

My understanding was if the build fails, execution should stop. is this a correct behavior ?

Please see the buildspec below.

version: 0.2

phases:
  install:
    commands:
      - echo Installing package.json..
      - npm install
      - echo Installing Mocha...
      - npm install -g mocha
  pre_build:
    commands:
      - echo Installing source NPM placeholder dependencies...
  build:
    commands:
      - echo Build started on `date`
      - echo Compiling the Node.js code
      - mocha modules/**/tests/*.js
  post_build:
    commands:
      - echo Build completed on `date`
artifacts:
  files:
    - modules/*
    - node_modules/*
    - package.json
    - config/*
    - server.js

Answer 1

CodeBuild detects build failures by exit codes. You should ensure that your test execution returns a non-zero exit code on failure.

POST_BUILD will always run as long as BUILD was also run (regardless of BUILD's success or failure.) The same goes for UPLOAD_ARTIFACTS. This is so you can retrieve debug information/artifacts.

If you want to do something different in POST_BUILD depending on the success or failure of BUILD, you can test the builtin environment variable CODEBUILD_BUILD_SUCCEEDING, which is set to 1 if BUILD succeeded, and 0 if it failed.