Zappa deploy fails with AttributeError: 'Template' object has no attribute 'add_description'

Question

Since a few days ago, zappa deploy fails with the following error (zappa version 0.50.0):

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/root/repo/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/zappa/cli.py", line 2785, in handle
    sys.exit(cli.handle())
  File "/root/repo/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/zappa/cli.py", line 510, in handle
    self.dispatch_command(self.command, stage)
  File "/root/repo/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/zappa/cli.py", line 557, in dispatch_command
    self.update(self.vargs['zip'], self.vargs['no_upload'])
  File "/root/repo/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/zappa/cli.py", line 993, in update
    endpoint_configuration=self.endpoint_configuration
  File "/root/repo/venv/lib/python3.6/site-packages/zappa/core.py", line 2106, in create_stack_template
    self.cf_template.add_description('Automatically generated with Zappa')
AttributeError: 'Template' object has no attribute 'add_description'

Answer 1

Since version 3.0.0, the package troposphere removed the deprecated Template methods (see the changelog).

Breaking changes: * Python 3.6+ (Python 2.x and earlier Python 3.x support is now deprecated due to Python EOL) * Remove previously deprecated Template methods.

The above issue can be fixed by adding troposphere<3 in the requirements file.

Answer 2

The answer by nbeuchat might not work for everyone, an alternative solution that might help would be to change the line in venv/lib/python3.6{or 7,8, etc.}/site-packages/zappa/core.py from add_description() to set_description().

Troposphere updated add_description to set_description along with other previously deprecated template methods which is why you see the problem.

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