Resource Orchestration Service:Overview

ROS CDK is an open source infrastructure as code (IaC) toolkit built on Resource Orchestration Service (ROS). Write cloud infrastructure in TypeScript, Python, Java, C#, JavaScript, or Go — ROS handles deployment, so you get repeatable, version-controlled infrastructure without writing JSON or YAML templates.

Usage notes

ROS CDK supports TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, and Go. For more information, see Sample entry-level application.

ROS CDK consists of two parts:

• Construct library: A collection of pre-written, modular, reusable code components for deploying cloud resources and building applications. The library abstracts away the complexity of configuring individual Alibaba Cloud services, so you can compose higher-level infrastructure patterns instead of working with raw resource definitions.

• CDK CLI: A command-line tool for interacting with your ROS CDK applications. Use it to synthesize ROS templates, deploy resources, query stacks, and delete stacks.

Use cases

ROS CDK fits well when your infrastructure needs to be fast, repeatable, and codified. Common use cases include:

• Infrastructure as code: Define VPCs, ECS instances, ApsaraDB RDS instances, ACK clusters, and other Alibaba Cloud resources in stacks using your preferred programming language. Each stack is repeatable across environments, so staging and production stay consistent without manual configuration drift.

• Complex architecture management: Model interdependencies between services as composable constructs. Build a large-scale application architecture by assembling and reusing those constructs rather than duplicating resource definitions across projects.

• Multi-team collaboration and hierarchical design: Store infrastructure code in a version control system alongside application code. Teams can own separate constructs or stacks, merge changes through standard code review, and deploy independently without conflicts. ROS CDK also supports hierarchical design of infrastructure so that each team can focus on separate services or components.

• CI/CD pipelines: Integrate ROS CDK directly into your continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) workflows to automate infrastructure updates when application code changes.

• Security and permission management: Codify Resource Access Management (RAM) roles and policies as part of your infrastructure, so security controls are version-controlled, reviewable, and consistently applied across deployments.

• Test-driven infrastructure: Write unit tests and synthetic tests against your infrastructure model before deploying. Catch configuration errors early and reduce production failures.

Benefits

• Use the programming language you already know: Write infrastructure in TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Java, C#, or Go. No need to learn a proprietary configuration language or master JSON/YAML template syntax.

• Build at a higher level of abstraction: Constructs encapsulate lower-level resource configurations, letting you focus on business logic rather than resource-level details.

• Share and reuse infrastructure patterns: Package infrastructure logic into constructs, publish them to your organization's internal library, and reuse them across projects — the same way you reuse application libraries.

• Catch errors before deployment: Statically typed languages like TypeScript and Java provide compile-time type checking. Configuration errors surface in your IDE, not at deploy time.

• Full IDE support: Because ROS CDK uses general-purpose languages, you get code completion, syntax highlighting, refactoring, and linting from your existing editor or IDE.

• Integrate with version control and code review: Infrastructure code lives alongside application code in your repository. Teams can review, audit, and track every infrastructure change through standard pull request workflows.

• Deploy through ROS: ROS CDK synthesizes ROS templates and deploys them through ROS, giving you predictable, repeatable deployments and automatic rollback on failure. If you already use ROS, you can start using ROS CDK without learning new IaC concepts.

• Fits into your existing toolchain: ROS CDK integrates with standard software engineering tools for source control, unit testing, integration testing, and CI/CD — no new tooling required.

Examples

ROS CDK provides examples across the following dimensions:

References

• API reference: Browse the full construct library API at ROS CDK references.

• CDK commands: For CDK CLI usage and examples, see ROS CDK commands.

• CDK features: For CDK features such as outputs and pseudo parameters, see ROS CDK features.

• GitHub repository: Visit Resource-Orchestration-Service-Cloud-Development-Kit to access the source code, submit issues, and review the license and release notes.