This project demonstrates how to set up an "infrastructure continuous delivery" architecture using GitHub, AWS CodePipeline and CloudFormation, with a project containing a nested stack.

1. Fork this repo.
2. Bootstrap the CloudFormation stack:
   1. 
   2. Enter the forked repo's owner in the GitHubOwner field.
   3. Create a New personal access token with repo and admin:repo_hook scopes, and enter the token in the GitHubToken field.
   4. Enter the name of an existing S3 bucket for storing pipeline artifacts in the ArtifactBucket field. (Create a bucket first if necessary.)
3. Verify the newly-created stack and pipeline.
   1. Check the CloudFormation Console to ensure your stack reaches the CREATE_COMPLETE state successfully.
   2. Check the CodePipeline Console to ensure the pipeline's Source and Deploy stages both completed successfully.
4. Update the parent CloudFormation stack:
   1. Modify cfn-template.yml in the Git repository, and commit/push the change.
   2. For example, try renaming the Dummy resource to dummy2.
5. Update the child CloudFormation stack:
   1. Modify nested.yml in the Git repository, and commit/push the change.
   2. For example, try renaming the Dummy resource to Dummy2.
6. Verify the stack update(s). a. Check the CodePipeline Console to ensure the pipeline processes the new commit in both stages. b. Check the CloudFormation Console to ensure your stack reaches the UPDATE_COMPLETE state successfully. c. Verify the created/updated resources in the Resources tab of the CloudFormation console match the values in the new template.

That's it!

Note: The CloudFormation Service Role (CFNRole) grans full admin permissions ('*') to your AWS account.

For more restricted, fine-grained security, you should move the CFNRole and PipelineRole resources into a separate CloudFormation stack (or just create them manually), reference them using Fn::ImportValue (or by a fixed-string name), and ensure that CFNRole grants least privilege depending on the Resources in your stack.

Talk from re:Invent 2016, "Infrastructure Continuous Delivery Using AWS CloudFormation"