aws-cloudformation.sh

#!/bin/bash

# wrapper around "aws cloudformation" CLI to ignore certain pseudo-errors

# aws cloudformation deploy exits with 255 for "No changes to deploy" see: https://github.com/awslabs/serverless-application-model/issues/71
# this script exits with 0 for that case

STDERR=$(( aws cloudformation "$@" ) 2>&1)
ERROR_CODE=$?
echo ${STDERR} 1>&2

if [[ "${ERROR_CODE}" -eq "255" && "${STDERR}" =~ "No changes to deploy" ]]; then exit 0; fi 

exit ${ERROR_CODE}

Good stuff!

nice!

Can be solved with --no-fail-on-empty-changeset switch now 💪

@jeroneemou - This got me out of a hole, thanks!

You can also add this to exit gracefully after the sam deploy ... command:

if [ "$?" -eq 255 ]
then
    echo "No changes to deploy."
    true
fi

the PIPESTATUS variable might be useful to you