The Front-End Pipeline

The problem

By default, your CSS and JavaScript ship inside the ui.apps package, which means a one-line CSS fix takes the same route as a Java change: full build, full pipeline, quality gates, deployment to every tier. Fifteen minutes at best, often much longer.

For teams where front-end work is the majority of change, that is a serious drag. The front-end pipeline decouples the two: front-end artefacts get their own Cloud Manager pipeline and are delivered separately from the AEM code.

How it changes things

• The ui.frontend module builds independently and produces its own deployable artefact.
• Cloud Manager gains a front-end pipeline — a separate pipeline type that builds only that module.
• The output is served from Adobe's CDN rather than embedded in the AEM package.
• The page component loads the assets from the CDN location instead of via a clientlib in /apps.

Deployment drops from a full-stack release to minutes, and the front-end and back-end teams stop blocking each other.

Enabling it

The documented steps, in order:

1. Review the ui.frontend module and make sure it is self-contained — it must build without depending on anything generated by the AEM build.
2. Update the project so ui.apps no longer embeds the generated site clientlib, and the page component references the pipeline-delivered assets instead.
3. Create a front-end pipeline in Cloud Manager pointing at the branch and the ui.frontend path.
4. Run it and verify the assets are served from the CDN.

Constraints worth knowing before you commit

• It is Cloud Service only. There is no equivalent on 6.5 or AMS.
• Local development changes. Your local AEM has no front-end pipeline, so the project must still work locally — usually by keeping the clientlib path as a local fallback, or running the webpack dev server as a proxy.
• Versioning discipline. Because deployments are independent, a front-end change that assumes new markup can ship before the AEM change that produces it. Someone has to own that coordination.
• Not everything moves. Component-specific clientlibs that must live alongside components in /apps can stay there; the pipeline suits the site-wide bundle.

Themes and the site template route

There is a related path: AEM Site Templates package a theme (the front-end) and site structure together, so a site can be created and themed largely without a Maven project. That is a different starting point from the archetype and worth knowing exists, though it is not the track you are on.