cloudformation-include: setting templateOptions.description appends the description in the imported stack, rather than replacing it

[jbschooley]

Describe the bug

I import a stack and set description in my stack's props. Instead of overriding the imported description, it appends the description from the imported stack to the provided description. There seems to be no way of fixing this other than changing the description in the imported template.

Use case: We have outgrown Amplify and are working on rebuilding our stack in CDK with as smooth of a transition as possible, as the backend is being used in production, and the Amplify backend is still actively being developed. As such, we want CDK to generate templates as similar as possible to what Amplify produces, so we want to remove everything possible from the diff to ensure we aren't missing anything. Amplify often changes up the description in the templates it produces, but cfn sometimes doesn't actually update the description (unless you also add tags) so the Amplify generated template won't match what's currently in cfn. So we try to override the description in cdk with this.templateOptions.description, but it just prepends it to the imported description.

Expected Behavior

this.templateOptions.description should override the description. I can override anything else from an imported stack, and the description should be no exception.

Current Behavior

CDK provided description is prepended to imported description. If imported description is {"createdOn":"Windows","createdBy":"Amplify","createdWith":"12.10.1","stackType":"auth-Cognito","metadata":{}} and CDK provided description is Amplify Cognito Stack for AWS Amplify CLI (to match what is already in cfn, which for whatever reason doesn't update along with the rest of the stack), the description becomes

Amplify Cognito Stack for AWS Amplify CLI
{"createdOn":"Windows","createdBy":"Amplify","createdWith":"12.10.1","stackType":"auth-Cognito","metadata":{}}

and there is no way to get it out of the diff.

Reproduction Steps

• Import a template with cloudformation-include that has a description
• Set the description in CDK this.templateOptions.description = 'New Description' after the import
• cdk diff

Possible Solution

No response

Additional Information/Context

No response

CDK CLI Version

2.124.0 (build 4b6724c)

Framework Version

No response

Node.js Version

v20.11.0

OS

Windows 11 22H2

Language

TypeScript

Language Version

No response

Other information

No response

[pahud]

Thanks for the report. Are you able to provide a minimal working code sample so we can copy/paste and reproduce that in our environment?

[jbschooley]

Sure: https://github.com/jbschooley/cdk-description-bug

Steps to reproduce:

1. Deploy
2. Remove comment from description (cdk-description-bug-stack.ts line 15)
3. cdk diff

[pahud]

This seems a bug and I don't have any workaround. Making it a p1.

[github-actions]

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