[dcardoza]

This is great. I recently went through the exercise of deploying a periodic lambda function using AWS SAM. The development workflow was great, except when I needed binary dependencies for the MSSQL database driver. Learning and using Lambda layers was cumbersome and the bulk of the dev time. This change will make the lives of engineers in docker shops much easier.

[julianwood]

This should make things easier if you're mature in container tooling. AWS SAM recently added much better support for Lambda Layers, and you can use makefiles etc. there. In fact, I would say building layers with SAM is probably the easiest way to build layers! Now you get to try with container images.