Specifying C(++) dependencies for python packages for use in AWS Lambda

Question

I have a serverless service that I want to be able to use the sasl pypi package from in AWS Lambda. Unfortunately, the AWS Lambda environment doesn't seem to have the newest versions of libstdc++.so, which means that when our build server zips up the pip install'd sasl package and we invoke the lambda, there are the expected errors:

Unable to import module 'handler': /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.21' not found (required by /var/task/sasl/saslwrapper.so)

My question is: How to get around this? Is there a way to build these on an Amazon Linux instance against updated libstdc++.so.6 so that it can be bundled in with the libs? Would setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH env variable to . and including the newest version of libstdc++.so.6 work? Are there best practices around this anywhere?

Answer 1

You can use docker with amazonlinux as your base image to build all your dependencies then copy these to your zipped package to be uploaded to your actual lambda: https://medium.com/@johnnyopao/python-dependencies-and-aws-lambda-18acbdebca20

Or you can do the equivalent on a remote EC2 (build) instance: http://www.perrygeo.com/running-python-with-compiled-code-on-aws-lambda.html

Last option, use AWS Cloud 9 as your IDE, as suggested by: https://markn.ca/2018/02/python-extension-modules-in-aws-lambda/