Clojure Lambda Experiments

Experimenting with AWS Lambda and Clojure.

• Ahead of time compilation (AOT) ✅
• Build an Uberjar ✅
• Build a native image with GraalVM ✅
• Run the compiled code in Docker ✅
• Push the Docker file to AWS 😕
• Add a lambda using the Docker container and test if the entry point is correct 😕
• Create a bash custom runtime for AWS Lambda ✅
• Deploy the custom runtime with the Clojure code compiled to a native image ✅
• Test the custom runtime locally in Docker, using a Custom Runtime image from AWS ✅

Resources

• clj-graal-docs - with an Hello World example
• Custom AWS Lambda runtimes
• Lambda Container Image Support (example with Custom Runtime)
• A GraalVM guide by Bruno Bonacci
• Building A Fast Command Line App With Clojure by Kira McLean
• How to AOT compile a Clojure application to a native binary and run it in AWS Lambda as a Docker image. by Esko Luontola
• aws-lambda-java at Docker Hub
• GraalVM and Native images

Notes

Clojure version

Using Clojure 1.10.2 that has GraalVM specific features/fixes.

Deploying to AWS vs testing locally

I found out that, when running the custom runtime locally in Docker with a custom runtime image, the bootstrap file should be copied in a different directory than the function code - not sure how this works when only pushing a zip to AWS.

GraalVM

I downloaded GraalVM, extracted the downloaded file and ran a virus scan (ClamTK). The scanner found a potential threat, that confused me: a Node.js npm package called imurmurhash.min.js. ClamTK status for this file was: PUA.Win.Trojan.Xored-1.

My quick fix for this was to navigate to the graalvm-ce-java11-21.0.0.2/languages folder and delete the entire js folder before running any GraalVM commands.

Why was this file flagged by the virus scanner?