Setup Information

August 18, 2026 · View on GitHub

You deploy this sample from source using the AWS SAM CLI.

Requirements

  • AWS CLI configured with permissions to create IAM roles, Lambda functions, DynamoDB tables, SNS/SQS resources, and Step Functions state machines
  • AWS SAM CLI
  • Go 1.26 or later
  • Make (optional — convenience targets in the root Makefile)

Docker is not required: the functions are built with SAM's native Go builder, which cross-compiles for the provided.al2023 arm64 runtime on any host.

Clone the repository

Go modules are used throughout, so you can clone the repository anywhere (no GOPATH setup needed):

git clone https://github.com/aws-samples/aws-step-functions-long-lived-transactions.git
cd aws-step-functions-long-lived-transactions

The repository contains one Go module per Lambda function plus a shared models module, tied together for local development with a go.work workspace file. To run all unit tests:

make test

Deploy the sample application

To build and deploy the application for the first time, run:

sam build
sam deploy --guided

Configuring SAM deploy
======================

        Looking for config file [samconfig.toml] :  Found
        Reading default arguments  :  Success

        Setting default arguments for 'sam deploy'
        =========================================
        Stack Name [sfn-saga]: 
        AWS Region [ap-southeast-2]: 
        #Shows you resources changes to be deployed and require a 'Y' to initiate deploy
        Confirm changes before deploy [y/N]: N
        #SAM needs permission to be able to create roles to connect to the resources in your template
        Allow SAM CLI IAM role creation [Y/n]: Y
        Save arguments to configuration file [Y/n]: Y
        SAM configuration file [samconfig.toml]: 
        SAM configuration environment [default]:

The first command builds all six functions. The second packages and deploys the application to AWS with a series of prompts:

  • Stack Name: The name of the stack to deploy to CloudFormation. This should be unique to your account and region, and a good starting point would be something matching your project name.

  • AWS Region: The AWS region you want to deploy your app to.

  • Confirm changes before deploy: If set to yes, any change sets will be shown to you before execution for manual review. If set to no, the AWS SAM CLI will automatically deploy application changes.

  • Allow SAM CLI IAM role creation: This template creates scoped-down AWS IAM roles for the Lambda functions and state machine. To deploy a stack that creates or modifies IAM roles, the CAPABILITY_IAM value for capabilities must be provided. If permission isn't provided through this prompt, you must explicitly pass --capabilities CAPABILITY_IAM to the sam deploy command.

  • Save arguments to samconfig.toml: If set to yes, your choices are saved to a configuration file inside the project, so that in the future you can just re-run sam deploy without parameters to deploy changes to your application.

The following command describes the outputs defined within the CloudFormation stack:

aws cloudformation describe-stacks \
    --stack-name aws-sfn-saga --query 'Stacks[].Outputs'

Completion

Once you have successfully deployed the application, go ahead and start testing the saga.

See the Session Guide for more information.

Clean up

To delete the sample application that you created, use the AWS CLI. Assuming you used your project name for the stack name, you can run the following:

aws cloudformation delete-stack --stack-name aws-sfn-saga