'Use CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND for nested stacks on CloudFormation

I am trying to use nested stack and when my ChangeSet is being executed, I got this error:

Requires capabilities : [CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND]

I went and create a pipeline with cloudformation.

This can be use to create a pipeline:

Configuration:
  ActionMode: CHANGE_SET_REPLACE
  ChangeSetName: changeset
  RoleArn: ??
  Capabilities: CAPABILITY_IAM
  StackName: appsync-graphql
  TemplatePath: BuildArtifact::output.yaml

This can’t:

Configuration:
  ActionMode: CHANGE_SET_REPLACE
  ChangeSetName: changeset
  RoleArn: ??
  Capabilities: 
    - CAPABILITY_IAM
    - CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND
  StackName: appsync-graphql
  TemplatePath: BuildArtifact::output.yaml

The error was: “Value of property Configuration must be an object with String (or simple type) properties”

This is the closest docs that I find: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/APIReference/API_UpdateStack.html

It said: Type: Array of strings for capabilites, and the aws cli docs says similarly, but doesn’t give an example.

So I ran out of ideas about what else to try to have CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND capability.

aws-codepipeline

Solution 1:^[1]

I tried another variant and it worked!

Configuration:
  ..
  Capabilities: CAPABILITY_IAM,CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND
  ...

Solution 2:^[2]

I got the answer from Keeton Hodgson, this cli command works:

sam deploy --template-file output.yaml --stack-name <AppName> --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND

Notice that there is no comma.

I still don't know how to change the pipeline template for it to work.

Solution 3:^[3]

I tried the solutions above and what worked for me today (June 2020) using the higher level sam was adding a space between the capabilities listed. It's complete insanity that there's no resilience in this text file interpretation. SAM's cli is open source so I guess I could put my code where my mouth is and submit a PR. Anyway.

samconfig.toml:

...
capabilities = "CAPABILITY_IAM CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND"
...

Then:

sam deploy

Output:

...
Capabilities               : ["CAPABILITY_IAM", "CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND"]
...

Solution 4:^[4]

Put the capabilities property at the very end like this

aws cloud formation deploy COMMAND --capabilities CAPABILITY_NAMED_IAM

Change the order

Configuration:
  ActionMode: CHANGE_SET_REPLACE
  ChangeSetName: changeset
  RoleArn: ??
  StackName: appsync-graphql
  TemplatePath: BuildArtifact::output.yaml
  Capabilities: 
    - CAPABILITY_IAM
    - CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND

Solution 5:^[5]

After some research found that you can actually add those capabilities in console.
Reference Capabilities - optional section in the cfn deploy phase definition in console

Sources

This article follows the attribution requirements of Stack Overflow and is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Source: Stack Overflow

Solution	Source
Solution 1	jbasko
Solution 2	Tan Duong
Solution 3	Julian H
Solution 4	Andre Leon Rangel
Solution 5	The VOYOU

'Use CAPABILITY_AUTO_EXPAND for nested stacks on CloudFormation

Solution 1:[1]

Solution 2:[2]

Solution 3:[3]

Solution 4:[4]

Solution 5:[5]