42 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
42 lines
1.5 KiB
Markdown
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---
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layout: "docs"
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page_title: "Provider Plugins"
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sidebar_current: "docs-plugins-provider"
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---
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# Provider Plugins
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A provider in Terraform is responsible for the lifecycle of a resource:
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create, read, update, delete. An example of a provider is AWS, which
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can manage resources of type `aws_instance`, `aws_eip`, `aws_elb`, etc.
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The primary reasons to care about provider plugins are:
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* You want to add a new resource type to an existing provider.
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* You want to write a completely new provider for managing resource
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types in a system not yet supported.
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* You want to write a completely new provider for custom, internal
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systems such as a private inventory management system.
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<div class="alert alert-block alert-warning">
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<strong>Advanced topic!</strong> Plugin development is a highly advanced
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topic in Terraform, and is not required knowledge for day-to-day usage.
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If you don't plan on writing any plugins, we recommend not reading
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this section of the documentation.
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</div>
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## Coming Soon!
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The documentation for writing custom providers is coming soon. In the
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mean time, you can look at how our
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[built-in providers are written](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/tree/master/builtin).
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We recommend copying as much as possible from our providers when working
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on yours.
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We're also rapidly working on improving the high-level helpers for
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writing providers. We expect that writing providers will become much
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easier very shortly, and acknowledge that writing them now is not the
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easiest thing to do.
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