Aws-cdk: cdk diff does not work with nested stacks

[cmckni3]

Running cdk diff only lists the S3 templates of the root stack as changed.

Reproduction Steps

Create a nested stack with some resources in a nested stack. Deploy the nested stack. Add more resources to nested stack.

cdk diff should report the changes in the nested stack.

Error Log

N/A

Environment

• CLI Version : 1.19.0
• Framework Version: 1.19.0
• OS : macOS
• Language : TypeScript

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This is :bug: Bug Report

[LanderN]

When a resource inside a nested stack fails, the error details are nowhere to be found.

In nested stack:

Embedded stack [enormousId] was not successfully created: The following resource(s) failed to create: [schema].

Without nested stack:

schema Property validation failure: [Length of value for property {/Definition} is less than minimum allowed length {1}]

The second error is obviously way more helpful, but is nowhere to be found when using nested stacks. Maybe this is related?

[cmckni3]

@LanderN it might be related. There's an issue for that exact issue at #4489

[cmckni3]

Maybe #5722 and #4488 are related.

[cmckni3]

any updates on this?

[LanderN]

This issue, #4489, #4490 and #5974 make working with Nested Stacks in CDK much more troublesome than it should be.
Is there any update on this?

[cmckni3]

@LanderN agreed

I updated to 1.33.0 yesterday but haven’t tried running cdk diff yet.

[strottos]

Any updates, we just hit this problem as well and it will cause us issues with using CDK. Is there a workaround?

[cmckni3]

I wonder if the recent announcement about nested stack change sets will help.

https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2020/11/aws-cloudformation-change-sets-now-support-nested-stacks/

[NetaNir]

@cmckni3 It does! I will look into what is required to add this to the cdk. Thanks!