# AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) Toolkit
[](https://badge.fury.io/js/aws-cdk)
The **AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK)** is an open-source software
development framework to define cloud infrastructure in code and provision it
through AWS CloudFormation.
The AWS CDK consists of two main components:
- a [class library](https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk), that you use to
to model your infrastructure in code; and
- a *toolkit*, consisting of a CLI or a programmatic library, to act on those
models.
This repository contains the code for the toolkit components. The [class library
repository](https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk) is the main repository for the CDK
project.
## Getting Help
The best way to interact with our team is through GitHub, on the [aws-cdk
repository](https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk). You can open an
[issue](https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/new/choose) and choose from one of
our templates for bug reports, feature requests, documentation issues, or
guidance.
If you have a support plan with AWS Support, you can also create a new [support case](https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/).
You may also find help on these community resources:
- Look through the [API Reference](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/latest/docs/aws-construct-library.html) or [Developer Guide](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/latest/guide)
- The #aws-cdk Slack channel in [cdk.dev](https://cdk.dev)
- Ask a question on [Stack Overflow](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/aws-cdk)
and tag it with `aws-cdk`
## Contributing
We welcome community contributions and pull requests. See
[CONTRIBUTING.md](./CONTRIBUTING.md) for information on how to set up a development
environment and submit code.
## Structure of this repository
Here are the packages in this repository. See the README of each package for more information about it:
| Package | Description | Published? | Maintained? |
| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | ----------- |
| [aws-cdk](./packages/aws-cdk/) | The CDK Toolkit CLI, main CLI interface to CDK projects. | Yes | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/toolkit-lib](./packages/@aws-cdk/toolkit-lib/) | A programmatic interface for the CDK Toolkit. | Yes | Yes |
| [cdk](./packages/cdk/) | An alias for `aws-cdk` so you can run `npx cdk` even if it's not installed. | Yes | Yes |
| [cdk-assets v3](./packages/cdk-assets/) | CLI component handling asset uploads, also used as a CLI in [CDK Pipelines](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cdk/api/v2/docs/aws-cdk-lib.pipelines-readme.html) | Yes | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/cloud-assembly-schema](./packages/@aws-cdk//cloud-assembly-schema/) | The contract between the CDK construct library and the CDK toolkit | Yes | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff](./packages/@aws-cdk/cloudformation-diff/) | CLI component for diffing CloudFormation templates | Yes | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/cli-plugin-contract](./packages/@aws-cdk/cli-plugin-contract/) | TypeScript types for CLI plugins. | Yes | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/cdk-cli-wrapper](./packages/@aws-cdk/cdk-cli-wrapper/) | A deprecated attempt at building a programmatic interface for the CLI | No | No |
| [@aws-cdk/node-bundle](./packages/@aws-cdk/node-bundle/) | A tool to build CLI bundles that include license attributions. | No | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/user-input-gen](./packages/@aws-cdk/user-input-gen/) | A build tool for the CLI and toolkit-lib. | No | Yes |
| [@aws-cdk/yarn-cling](./packages/@aws-cdk/yarn-cling/) | A deprecated build tool for the CLI. | No | No |
Every package comes with its own unit tests. There is a companion repository to this one containing the integration tests. You can find it here: <https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk-cli-testing>
See the [contributing guide](./CONTRIBUTING.md) for more information on this repository.
## Compatibility
The CLI is always able to process CDK apps using a version of the Construct Library
released before it. We recommend you always keep the CLI version up-to-date to get the
latest features.
For more details on the compatibility model and specific versions that work together,
see [COMPATIBILITY.md](COMPATIBILITY.md).