[@aws-cdk/aws-lambda-nodejs] Bad performance on deployment of NodejsFunction construct, compared to plain Function construct

[Dzhuneyt]

Whenever I try to deploy a stack that's based mainly on Lambdas, as part of a relatively sized project (20-30 Lambdas), I am faced with a terrible development experience when using a fairly common combination of:

• AWS CDK
• The NodejsFunction construct by the @aws-cdk/aws-lambda-nodejs package
• TypeScript based Lambdas
• A Mac laptop

To demonstrate the magnitude of the issue, I created a simple CDK app with a simple CDK stack with 10 identical (almost empty of logic) Lambdas.
In the first scenario, I deploy the stack using .js files and the standard new lambda.Function() construct.
In the second scenario I deploy the stack using .ts files and the new NodejsFunction() construct.

The time difference between both deployments (always starting from a non-existing stack in CloudFormation) is the following:

• lambda.Function construct deployment time for a stack of 10 Lambdas: 71 seconds
• NodejsFunction construct deployment time for a stack of 10 Lambdas: 330 seconds

To help mitigate it to some degree, I contributed a pull request a while ago (#8544) which adds a ":delegated" flag to Docker volumes that build the Lambda inside the NodejsFunction construct. However, apparently, this optimization is not enough for real life development and deployment.

I might be interested in contributing to the solution of this problem, but currently - I'm a bit out of ideas on how to approach it. Suggestions are welcome.

---

Minimum reproducable code pushed to this temporary repo: https://github.com/Dzhuneyt/aws-cdk-nodejs-function-performance-test

[jogold]

Duplicate of #9120

See #9632 for a WIP to solve this (and #9564) by bundling locally instead of in Docker

Could you try your app with the code in #9632? You will need to have Parcel v2 installed in your project: yarn add --dev parcel@next or npm install --save-dev parcel@next

[Dzhuneyt]

@jogold I tried, but wasn't able to change the @aws-cdk/aws-lambda-nodejs to refer to your pull request due to various cross-package version dependencies, etc. Do you know of an easy way to attach a specific commit of a specific package of @aws-cdk to an existing CDK project?

[jogold]

@Dzhuneyt starting from v1.58.0, replace the files in node_modules/@aws-cdk/aws-lambda-nodejs/lib/bundling.js and node_modules/@aws-cdk/aws-lambda-nodejs/lib/util.js with the files provided here https://gist.github.com/jogold/63e5f315aefb8a0bb88477caaa10d826

[eladb]

Duplicate #9632