In study of existing providers we've found a pattern we werent previously
accounting for of using a nested block type to represent a group of
arguments that relate to a particular feature that is always enabled but
where it improves configuration readability to group all of its settings
together in a nested block.
The existing NestingSingle was not a good fit for this because it is
designed under the assumption that the presence or absence of the block
has some significance in enabling or disabling the relevant feature, and
so for these always-active cases we'd generate a misleading plan where
the settings for the feature appear totally absent, rather than showing
the default values that will be selected.
NestingGroup is, therefore, a slight variation of NestingSingle where
presence vs. absence of the block is not distinguishable (it's never null)
and instead its contents are treated as unset when the block is absent.
This then in turn causes any default values associated with the nested
arguments to be honored and displayed in the plan whenever the block is
not explicitly configured.
The current SDK cannot activate this mode, but that's okay because its
"legacy type system" opt-out flag allows it to force a block to be
processed in this way anyway. We're adding this now so that we can
introduce the feature in a future SDK without causing a breaking change
to the protocol, since the set of possible block nesting modes is not
extensible.
Previously we would construct a proposed new state with unknown values in
place of any not-set-in-config computed attributes, trying to save the
provider a little work in specifying that itself.
Unfortunately that turns out to be problematic because it conflates two
concerns: attributes can be explicitly set in configuration to an unknown
value, in which case the final result of that unknown overrides any
default value the provider might normally populate.
In other words, this allows the provider to recognize in the proposed new
state the difference between an Optional+Computed attribute being set to
unknown in the config vs not being set in the config at all.
The provider now has the responsibility to replace these proposed null
values with unknown values during PlanResourceChange if it expects to
select a value during the apply step. It may also populate a known value
if the final result can be predicted at plan time, as is the case for
constant defaults specified in the provider code.
This change comes from a realization that from core's perspective the
helper/schema ideas of zero values, explicit default values, and
customizediff tweaks are all just examples of "defaults", and by allowing
the provider to see during plan whether these attributes are being
explicitly set in configuration and thus decide whether the default will
be provided immediately during plan or deferred until apply.
Martin Atkins