background

by default, to update the hugo generated site, it expects :

• local new build ;
• push that whole newly built /build dir to repo ;
• AWS amplify git clone for deployment ;

this also implies to make small changes / updates in github via the web interface will not have the new changes reflected online.

the updated amplify config file

the build setting is therefore updated as :

1. add .gitignore or update the existing file to avoid /build ;
2. include amplify.yml in the repo ( or via the web dashboard inside AWS amplify ) ;
3. update the content of amplify.yml as the followings :

---
version: 1

env:
  variables:
    # always AVOID the prefix "v" !!
    # update this accordingly to the latest / desired version
    HUGO_VER: 0.139.3
    # define the file to download and the path to it
    HUGO_TAR: hugo_extended_"${HUGO_VER}"_Linux-64bit.tar.gz
    DOWNLOAD_PREFIX: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/releases/download
    # beware of the "v" in front of the version here
    DOWNLOAD_PATH: "${DOWNLOAD_PREFIX}/v${HUGO_VER}"
 
frontend:
  phases:
    preBuild:
      commands:
        - sudo mkdir -p /public
        - sudo dnf update -y
        - wget "${DOWNLOAD_PATH}"/"$HUGO_TAR"
        - tar -zxvf "${HUGO_TAR}"
        - sudo mv hugo /usr/local/bin/
        - /usr/local/bin/hugo version # verify the hugo version to be used

    build:
      commands:
        # make sure the version downloaded above is used with absolute path
        - /usr/local/bin/hugo -F --minify
  artifacts:
    baseDirectory: /public
    files:
      - '**/*'
  cache:
    paths: []

some notes on the above yaml file

• as of 2024-12-02, the theme ananke was used, which requires the latest version of hugo, or at least not working with the version of hugo came with the default build image in AWS Amplify ( AWS Linux 2023 ) ;
• the version of hugo came with the default build image is v0.12x.x ( something like that ) ;
• an absolute path to the freshly downloaded hugo executable must be specified in the build command to make sure it won’t use the default version ;
• the command / keyword build has to be removed in the build command above ~

overview

the hugo official guidelines regarding hosting on AWS amplify is slightly confusing or unclear at best, and some additional notes are given below.

additional note to step 3 in the section “Hosting”

The very tiny and unclear screen capture attached there shows baseDirectory: /public, which never occur in the apps I just built yesterday ( 2024-11-30 ), none of them carry that so-called “detection”, which means you must add that yourself.

source 1

/<*>	

• target: /index.html
• type: 404 rewrite`

source 2

</^[^.]+$|\.(?!(css|gif|ico|jpg|js|png|txt|svg|woff|ttf|map|json)$)([^.]+$)/>	

• target: index.html
• type: 200 rewrite

link to the amplfiy instance

• built with gatsby
• hosted on AWS amplify

migration pending.