Question

A development team uses AWS CodeBuild to build a Java application. Their buildspec.yml runs unit tests during the build phase, but they notice that when a unit test command returns a non-zero exit code, CodeBuild still continues to the post_build phase and produces artifacts, resulting in broken builds being deployed. They want the build to stop immediately and be marked as FAILED if any command in the build phase fails. What is the correct explanation of CodeBuild behavior and how to fix this?

Accepted Answer

By default, if a command in a phase fails, CodeBuild stops that phase and the build fails; the team must have set on-failure to CONTINUE for the build phase, which they should change to ABORT.

Answer

CodeBuild always ignores command exit codes; the team must add a manual 'exit 1' after their test command to force failure.

Answer

The team must move the unit tests into a separate CodePipeline test stage because CodeBuild cannot fail on test results.

Answer

CodeBuild runs all commands in a phase regardless of exit codes by default; the only fix is to enable the 'batch build' feature to enforce ordering.