Install cloudformation-cli with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• cfn
• cfn-cli

Project history

AWS created the cloudformation-cli repository in 2018 and released early public versions in 2019 as CloudFormation's extension model became public. The official AWS docs position the CLI as the tool used to model, develop, test, and submit resource providers for CloudFormation.

The project sits in the aws-cloudformation GitHub organization alongside language plugins and related extension tooling, reflecting a design where the core CLI coordinates schemas, handlers, contract tests, and registry publication.

Adoption history

Unlike general-purpose AWS CLIs, CloudFormation CLI is adopted mostly by provider authors, platform teams, and vendors that need first-class CloudFormation resource types. Homebrew packaging gives macOS users a simple install path, but the package is inherently narrower than awscli or cdk.

Its adoption is tied to the CloudFormation Registry ecosystem: as organizations add private or third-party resource types, the cfn/cfn-cli package becomes part of build pipelines for extension development and contract testing.

How it is used

Developers use cfn init, generate, test, submit, and related commands to create a provider project, run contract tests, and register or update a resource type or module in CloudFormation.

typeConfiguration.json under ~/.cfn-cli is used by the toolkit for type configuration during contract testing and development workflows. AWS credentials normally come from the broader AWS SDK/CLI credential chain rather than a CloudFormation CLI-specific credential file.

Why package nerds care

cloudformation-cli is package-nerd significant because it exposes AWS's extension-development workflow as a Python CLI in Homebrew. It is not a high-volume shell utility, but it is the canonical local tool for a specialized infrastructure-as-code authoring loop.

The formula also illustrates a common cloud-tooling packaging pattern: a narrow vendor CLI with a small user base but high importance for the teams that need reproducible IaC extension builds.

Timeline

• 2018: Official cloudformation-cli GitHub repository was created.
• 2019: Early public v0.1.x releases were published as CloudFormation extension tooling emerged.
• 2019: AWS documented the CloudFormation CLI and Registry workflow for provider development.
• 2020s: The CLI continued as the toolkit behind CloudFormation resource provider and module development.

Related projects

• AWS CloudFormation Registry is the service surface where generated providers and modules are registered.
• Language plugins such as cloudformation-cli-python-plugin and other aws-cloudformation tooling extend the provider-development workflow.
• AWS CDK, SAM, cfn-lint, and CloudFormation Guard are adjacent IaC tools, but they solve different authoring, deployment, validation, or policy problems.

Sources

• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cloudformation-cli/latest/userguide/what-is-cloudformation-cli.html
• https://github.com/aws-cloudformation/cloudformation-cli