Previously the "terraform state ..." subcommands were the only way to
perform various manipulations of the state, but in recent Terraform
versions we have replaced these with better options.
Since these pages seem to already have pretty good search engine
optimization for the use-cases they are describing, we'll prioritize
mentioning the new approaches and only mention the now-deprecated or
de-emphasized features as a secondary approach.
Specifically:
- Describe the -replace=... planning option in preference to
"terraform taint", and present taint as primarily a mechanism for
Terraform to use itself, as opposed to something end-users should
typically use directly.
- Introduce the config-based refactoring features before describing
"terraform state mv".
The older features here are still applicable in some situations and are
required for those still using older versions of Terraform, so we will
retain the information about them for now while aiming to be clearer in
each case about which is our preferred, modern approach.
Thank you. Your suggestion to use "instead of" makes the sentence even more easy to understand.
Co-authored-by: Laura Pacilio <83350965+laurapacilio@users.noreply.github.com>
We recently made a change to how provisioners upload files in order to
address an unintended remote code execution vector when using SSH, which
revealed that we had not previously documented well enough the expected
contract for how provisioners upload files to remote systems, and so some
users were depending on unintended consequences of the the bug now fixed.
We are retaining the fix on security-related grounds, but this is a good
prompt to be clearer in the docs about what exactly Terraform is doing
when asked to upload files over SSH and WinRM, so users can understand
what is supported and write their configurations accordingly.
This also includes an additional section to the v1.1 upgrade guide, since
we apparently neglected to document this intentional breaking change in
the first draft of that page.
Of course, provisioners as a whole remain a last resort, and so we're
documenting this as hopefully a helpful aid to those who have no other
option, and not meaning in any way to recommend their use for any new
use-cases.
There was an unintended regression in go-getter v1.5.9's GitGetter which
caused us to temporarily fork that particular getter into Terraform to
expedite a fix. However, upstream v1.5.10 now includes a
functionally-equivalent fix and so we can heal that fork by upgrading.
We'd also neglected to update the Module Sources docs when upgrading to
go-getter v1.5.9 originally and so we were missing documentation about the
new "depth" argument to enable shadow cloning, which I've added
retroactively here along with documenting its restriction of only
supporting named refs.
This new go-getter release also introduces a new credentials-passing
method for the Google Cloud Storage getter, and so we must incorporate
that into the Terraform-level documentation about module sources.
This paragraph is trying to say that try only works for dynamic errors and
not for errors that are _not_ based on dynamic decision-making in
expressions.
I'm not sure if this typo was always here or if it was mistakenly "corrected"
at some point, but either way the word "probably" changes the meaning
of this sentence entirely, making it seem like Terraform is hedging
the likelihood of a problem rather than checking exactly for one.
Previously we would only ever add new lock entries or update existing
ones. However, it's possible that over time a module may _cease_ using
a particular provider, at which point we ought to remove it from the lock
file so that operations won't fail when seeing that the provider cache
directory is inconsistent with the lock file.
Now the provider installer (EnsureProviderVersions) will remove any lock
file entries that relate to providers not included in the given
requirements, which therefore makes the resulting lock file properly match
the set of packages the installer wrote into the cache.
This does potentially mean that someone could inadvertently defeat the
lock by removing a provider dependency, running "terraform init", then
undoing that removal, and finally running "terraform init" again. However,
that seems relatively unlikely compared to the likelihood of removing
a provider and keeping it removed, and in the event it _did_ happen the
changes to the lock entry for that provider would be visible in the diff
of the provider lock file as usual, and so could be noticed in code
review just as for any other change to dependencies.
This makes it match some incoming links we have elsewhere, but also it
makes the heading a bit more consice because "module" isn't really adding
anything here anyway: input variables are _always_ in modules.
We late-reorganized this into the "Module Development" subsection, but
forgot to update the actual link in the navbar, so it was still linking
to its old location.
Since this is only a minor release there isn't any super-significant
upgrade guide content this time, but I've used this page to elaborate on
some of the upgrade notes already recorded in the Terraform Changelog, to
give additional context if needed to the hopefully-small number of users
that these changes will directly effect during upgrading.
As explained in the changes: The 'enhanced' backend terminology, which
only truly pertains to the 'remote' backend with a single API (Terraform
Cloud/Enterprise's), has been found to be a confusing vestige which need
only be explained in the context of the 'remote' backend.
These changes reorient the explanation(s) of backends to pertain more
directly to their primary purpose, which is storage of state snapshots
(and not implementing operations).
That Terraform operations are still _implemented_ by the literal
`Backend` and `Enhanced` interfaces is inconsequential a user of
Terraform, an internal detail.
Laura Pacilio