IdeaSift

Serverless developers lose time to repeated function packaging and deploys

AWS CDK developers with many Lambda functions report that bundling can add over a minute to updates, while Python Docker builds may reinstall dependencies even when only the code changed. Some Terraform users also report that source changes do not reliably trigger Cloud Functions redeploys, leaving them to change archive paths. Teams work around these problems in project-specific ways rather than relying on fast, predictable asset builds and updates.

For serverless developers using AWS CDK and Terraform. Mentioned from Aug 2018 to Jul 2026 on GitHub.

10 different people described this problem in 7 separate discussions.

Week of 2026-07-13: 1Week of 2026-07-20: 0Week of 2026-07-27: 0Week of 2026-08-03: 0Week of 2026-08-10: 0Week of 2026-08-17: 0Week of 2026-08-24: 0Week of 2026-08-31: 0Week of 2026-09-07: 0Week of 2026-09-14: 0Week of 2026-09-21: 0Week of 2026-09-28: 0
1 mention in the last 12 weeks
Indie fit
6.0/10
Pain
6.8/10
Frequency
8.6/10
Willingness to pay
3.2/10
Momentum
4.7/10
Who pays
Businesses
Competition
Medium
Build difficulty
Medium

What people said

Quoted word for word. Follow a link to read the whole discussion.

  1. Using cdk watch --hotswap on this parent stack now takes 1-2 minutes at every lambda update. That kills the developer experience. We have searched around asset bundling and esbuild but it seems like we have no other way than to split to top-level stacks for now, so we can mitigate those long repeated processes per lamb…
    fab-mindflow on GitHub (aws/aws-cdk)Mar 2023Has a workaround
  2. However, this happens each time any code change is made. Each time you change Lambda code (not its dependencies), the Docker build performs the above steps, downloading libraries from the internet
    m-radzikowski on GitHub (aws/aws-cdk)Jan 2023+35 upvotesHas a workaroundWould pay
Build brief

See what to build and who will buy it

  • 1 product idea with the smallest useful version and pricing
  • 5 places to find your first customers
  • 8 more quotes from people who have this problem
  • Current workarounds, existing solutions and risks