This kinda-weird feature was previously quite severely under-documented in
terms of exactly what effect it has. This new documentation for it first
attempts to frame it as something that should be rarely used, and then
explains in more detail exactly how it behaves for different top-level
block types within the configuration.
As part of revamping the "Configuration" portion of the website for the
v0.12 release, here we update the Terraform Settings page to use a similar
"guide-like" writing style as the other updated pages in this section.
Previously we just listed out all of the functions in alphabetical order
inside the "Interpolation Syntax" page, but that format doesn't leave much
room for details and usage examples.
Now we give each function its own page, and categorize them for easier
navigation. While many functions are very simple and don't really warrant
a full page, certain functions do have additional details that are worth
mentioning and this structure scales better for those more complicated
functions.
So far this includes only the numeric and string functions. Other
categories will follow in subsequent commits.
This rewrite of the "Configuration Syntax" page now gives some more detail
on the top-level structural constructs and de-emphasizes the name "HCL"
as subordinate to "the Terraform language".
It also now includes some commentary on valid identifiers and comments,
and issues around character encodings and line endings.
In addition, we now have a new "Expressions" page that replaces the old
"Interpolation Syntax" page, covering the expression language features
we inherit from HCL and how they behave in the context of Terraform.
The "Expressions" page currently links to a page about the built-in
functions which does not yet exist. This will be created in a later
commit.
This adopts a more guide-like writing style, similar to what prior commits
have done to some other subsections of this section.
The data sources page has not got any real attention since the feature
was first added, and our vocabulary for describing them and their
lifecycle hadn't quite settled when the page was originally written. This
new version is consistent in how it uses "data source" to describe the
feature that providers offer and "data resource" to describe what is
created by a "data" block in configuration, which then allows us to
draw on the many shared features between both data and managed resources.
For the moment this waits until "data resource" is defined in order to
first introduce the qualifier "managed resource". We may wish to revise
this again to mention that more specific nomenclature in passing on the
"Resources" page, in case a user encounters it elsewhere and wants to
learn what it means without needing to be familiar with data resources
first.
This adopts a more guide-like writing style, similar to what prior commits
have done to some other subsections of this section.
Since we already have a whole top-level section devoted to modules, there
is no need for full coverage of all of their features here. Instead, this
section focuses on an an initial introduction to what modules are and
the basics of their usage within the Terraform language. We then link
to the main modules section for the full details.
This adopts a more guide-like writing style, similar to what prior commits
have done to some other subsections of this section.
In the process of writing this, I identified some unclear statements in
the "Resources" subsection, and so these are also revised here for
consistency with the output values documentation.
These revisions reflect this sub-section's new earlier placement in the
sub-section list, leading to a more guide-like style for the initial
sections.
Also includes some minor copy-editing to align terminology with that
introduced in the prior commit for the "Resources" docs page.
This is now the leading subsection of the Configuration section of the
docs, and so this rewrite intends to make it more "guide-like" and as
accessible as possible to those who are not yet familiar with other
Terraform concepts.
This rewrite also attempts to introduce some consistency into our
vocabulary, which should eventually be reflected throughout our
documentation. In particular:
- "Resource" refers to the block the user writes in configuration, while
"Resource _Type_" refers to what the provider defines. We previously
used "resource" for both of these interchangeably.
- "Resource" is no longer used to refer to what gets created and managed
in remote APIs as a result of a resource block in configuration. Lacking
a good distinct name for these, this guide uses the word "object",
qualifying it as "infrastructure object" or "remote object" where
necessary to retain clarity. This distinction is important to enable
a clear description of resource lifecycle.
- "Argument" refers to an element (attribute or block) within a resource
block. This terminology was already being used in some places, so we
embrace it here as a way to distinguish from "attribute", which is
what a resource _exports_ for use in expressions.
- Since interpolation is no longer needed to use expressions in the
language, the word "expression" is used to describe the definition of
a value that might involve some computation. Where necessary, this is
used with a modifier "arbitrary expression" to contrast with situations
where the set of allowed expression constructs is constrained.
The prior content on this page was little more than an instruction to
begin navigating the sub-sections of this section.
The new content aims to give a broad overview of some of the language
concepts and a syntax example, in order to create some context to help
the user navigate the subsections more easily.
This also introduces for the first time usage of the term "the Terraform
language". This was previously left un-named, leading to some awkward
sentence constructions elsewhere in the docs. This new name gives us
some specific terminology to use in order to contrast the language that
exists at Terraform's level of abstraction, defining the semantics, from
the underlying grammar provided by HCL.
With the additional configuration language features coming in Terraform
v0.12, our existing documentation structure is beginning to strain.
Here we reorganize the navigation slightly in order to introduce the
concepts in a more appropriate order so that we can reveal complexity
more gradually. Subsequent commits will revise the content of these
pages to better reflect the new sequencing.
The "Environment Variables" page is moved from the Configuration section
into the "Commands" section, since it is not considered a part of the
configuration language and thus more appropriate in the CLI documentation.
The old placement is reflective of the broader purpose that the
"Configuration" section had originally, but its new focus will be on
the Terraform language (.tf files) in particular, with other aspects of
customizing Terraforms behavior covered in other sections.
website: Reconcile docs about plugin discovery and downloading
I'm attempting to keep things simple for normal users while making sure we've
got the full behavior written down somewhere for plugin developers.
This commit doesn't stand alone; it's paired with a commit in the
terraform-website repo, to deal with some related content in the "extend"
section.
It's been a while since we made any significant updates to this page.
The main theme of this revamp is to ensure that we highlight how to
provide "ambient credentials" for each of the module sources using the
standard mechanisms for each source type.
While there, I also attempted a general cleanup to highlight the main
cases and make this less like a detailed description of all of
go-getter's esoteric features, and did some general copy-editing to write
it in our usual documentation "voice".
After some discussion with "iamakulov" on Twitter it seems that the use
of the word "conflicts" and "merge conflicts" here was sounding like us
implicitly condoning the use of version control as a mechanism for
distributing local state files, which hasn't been recommended for quite
some time since remote state now provides a much more robust solution.
While here, I also tweaked some other language on this page for style and
for use of terminology we more commonly use in our more recent
documentation.
Following the examples as they were previously would cause errors
accessing demo.consul.io. Now we consistently set the scheme to https for
all examples that use demo.consul.io.
This also includes some other updates to the URLs, since the Consul demo
has been rebuilt with a different based configuration, and some general
formatting and copyediting changes in the Consul example.
Create-before-destroy dependencies are automatically ordered correctly
by terraform. Remove the old notice about requiring all dependencies to
have the same setting for create_before_destroy.
In an earlier commit we added the "Best Practices" situation to try to
clarify the intended uses of named workspaces and to warn against using
them as an alternative to system decomposition.
However, the prior statement was cautious in its recommendations in the
interests of being pragmatic, and as a result we've seen that users have
in some cases misunderstood or disregarded these recommendations.
The new "When to use Multiple Workspaces" section aims to be more explicit
that having multiple separate Terraform configurations is the preferred
solution for many use-cases, and that workspaces are intended for a
more limited set of use-cases around convenient development and testing.
It also emphasizes the analogy to version control branches that was just
a footnote in the prior text, to help the reader become familiar with the
concept by relating it to a concept and workflow they are hopefully
already familiar with.
This new section also attempts to provide a more elaborate description of
the proposed alternative when the goal is system decomposition. In the
long run some of this content would probably be better placed elsewhere
since it is useful advice even for users who never discover named
workspaces, but it can live here for the time being to limit the scope of
this change until we are ready to make more comprehensive revisions to
the docs in this area.
Finally, the introductory documentation here is adjusted slightly in
preparation for the intended future expansion of workspaces to include
stored variable values and, for more tailored backends like Terraform
Enterprise, a full log of prior operations. More revisions will be
required to cover the specifics of this later, but this new framing will
hopefully help users form a mental model of named workspaces that has
room for these future enhancements and the corresponding concept in
Terraform Enterprise, rather than our previous framing that workspaces
are fundamentally just named states.
Also:
- In the getting started guide, the TFE content was all tailored to the older
run-locally workflow. I've replaced it with some brief explanation and a link
to the dedicated TFE getting started guide.
- Fixed a sidebar link glitch in the configuration section. (Both "Terraform"
and "Terraform Enterprise" were marked as active if you were on the TFE page.)
- Renamed the "Terraform Enterprise" page "Terraform Push." (Some people have
gotten confused and landed on this page when trying to set up the `atlas`
remote backend.)
provisioner. Also fixes an issue where channels and URLs are
not honored in the initial package install.
Signed-off-by: Rob Campbell <rcampbell@chef.io>
This new argument allows overriding of the working directory of the child process, with the default still being the working directory of Terraform itself.
This change allows the Habitat supervisor service name to be
configurable. Currently it is hard coded to `hab-supervisor`.
Signed-off-by: Nolan Davidson <ndavidson@chef.io>
Since an early version of Terraform, the `destroy` command has always
had the `-force` flag to allow an auto approval of the interactive
prompt. 0.11 introduced `-auto-approve` as default to `false` when using
the `apply` command.
The `-auto-approve` flag was introduced to reduce ambiguity of it's
function, but the `-force` flag was never updated for a destroy.
People often use wrappers when automating commands in Terraform, and the
inconsistency between `apply` and `destroy` means that additional logic
must be added to the wrappers to do similar functions. Both commands are
more or less able to run with similar syntax, and also heavily share
their code.
This commit updates the command in `destroy` to use the `-auto-approve` flag
making working with the Terraform CLI a more consistent experience.
We leave in `-force` in `destroy` for the time-being and flag it as
deprecated to ensure a safe switchover period.
When writing an example for a submodule, the example should be placed in
`examples/{example name}` instead of
`modules/{module name}/examples/{example name}`.
We have outgrown the single flat list presentation of providers due to the shear number now present, so we'll move here to a model where the providers are split into a number of categories that each contain a smaller list.
The full list is still included in the body of the main index page for quick access via search, but the categories make for a more accessible navbar for those who are just browsing.
Triton Manta allows an account other than the main triton account to be used via RBAC.
Here we expose the SDC_USER / TRITON_USER options to the backend so that a user can be specified.
* add catagory files
* try new source path
* cleaning up formatting
* fixin
* add all providers to providers index page
* add descriptions
* add link to form and first two providers
* small edits
* small edits
* small changes
* add community providers and decription edit from marketing
* add some lines to improve design
* fix typos
First successful run with private origin and HAB_AUTH_TOKEN set
Update struct, schema, and decodeConfig names to more sensible versions
Cleaned up formatting
Update habitat provisioner docs
Remove unused unitstring
Users commonly ask how the S3 backend can be used in an organization that
splits its infrastructure across many AWS accounts.
We've traditionally shied away from making specific recommendations here
because we can't possibly anticipate the different standards and
regulations that constrain each user. This new section attempts to
describe one possible approach that works well with Terraform's workflow,
with the goal that users make adjustments to it taking into account their
unique needs.
Since we are intentionally not being prescriptive here -- instead
considering this just one of many approaches -- it deviates from our usual
active writing style in several places to avoid giving the impression that
these are instructions to be followed exactly, which in some cases
requires the use of passive voice even though that is contrary to our
documentation style guide. For similar reasons, this section is also
light on specific code examples, since we do not wish to encourage users
to just copy-paste the examples without thinking through the consequences.
* Verify discovery works without trailing slash on discovery URL
* Update registry API docs with browse and search endpoints
* Add sample request/responses
* Add comment to test to indicate expecations
* Fix typo
* Remove trailing slash weirdness
It's important to match the version of local Terraform with the remote Terraform version in Terraform Enterprise when using the "terraform push" command, or else the uploaded configuration package may not be compatible.
The differences between the implicit and explicit modes of passing
provider configurations between modules are significant enough to warrant
giving these approaches different names and describing them separately.
This also includes documentation of the current limitation discussed in
#16612, where explicit passing requires a proxy configuration block even
for a _default_ provider configuration, because that limitation is being
accepted for the 0.11.0 release to limit scope.
The initial pass of this section had some remaining ambiguities, so this
is a second revision that attempts to use terminology more consistently
and to not some additional behaviors that were not described in the
initial version.
We've historically been somewhat inconsistent in how we refer to the
type of object defined by "variable" blocks in configuration. Parts of
our documentation refer to them as "input variables" or just "variables",
while our implementation refers to them as "user variables".
Since Terraform Registry is now also referring to these as "Inputs", here
we standardize on "Input Variable" as the fully-qualified name for this
concept, with "variable" being a shorthand for this where context is
obvious. Outside of this context, anything that can be referred to in
an interpolation expression is generically known as a "variable", with
Input Variables being just one kind, specified by the "var." prefix.
While this terminology shift is not critical yet, it will become more
important as we start to document the new version of the configuration
language so we can use the generic meaning of "variable" there.
The bulk of the text on this page hasn't been revised for some time and
so parts of it were using non-idiomatic terminology or not defining terms
at all.
The main goal of this revision is to standardize on the following terms:
- "provider configuration" refers to a specific provider block in config,
as a distinct idea from the provider _itself_, which is a singleton.
- "Default" vs. "additional" provider configurations, distinguishing
those without and with "alias" arguments respectively. These are named
here so that we can use this terminology to describe the different
behaviors of each for the purposes of provider inheritance between
modules.
The "terraform" provider was previously split out into its own repository,
but that turned out to be a mistake due to how tightly it depends on
aspects of Terraform Core.
Here we prepare to bring it back into the core repository by reorganizing
the directory layout to conform with what's expected there.
This allows the user to customize the location where Terraform stores
the files normally placed in the ".terraform" subdirectory, if e.g. the
current working directory is not writable.
Now includes more complete information on usage of private registries and
updates the module registry API documentation to include the new
version-enumeration endpoint along with describing Terraform's discovery
protocol.
The modules mechanism has changed quite a bit for version 0.11 and so
although simple usage remains broadly compatible there are some
significant changes in the behavior of more complex modules.
Since large parts of this were rewritten anyway, I also took the
opportunity to do some copy-editing to make the prose on this page more
consistent with our usual editorial voice and to wrap the long
lines.
In the 0.10 release we added an opt-in mode where Terraform would prompt
interactively for confirmation during apply. We made this opt-in to give
those who wrap Terraform in automation some time to update their scripts
to explicitly opt out of this behavior where appropriate.
Here we switch the default so that a "terraform apply" with no arguments
will -- if it computes a non-empty diff -- display the diff and wait for
the user to type "yes" in similar vein to the "terraform destroy" command.
This makes the commonly-used "terraform apply" a safe workflow for
interactive use, so "terraform plan" is now mainly for use in automation
where a separate planning step is used. The apply command remains
non-interactive when given an explicit plan file.
The previous behavior -- though not recommended -- can be obtained by
explicitly setting the -auto-approve option on the apply command line,
and indeed that is how all of the tests are updated here so that they can
continue to run non-interactively.
This PR changes manta from being a legacy remote state client to a new backend type. This also includes creating a simple lock within manta
This PR also unifies the way the triton client is configured (the schema) and also uses the same env vars to set the backend up
It is important to note that if the remote state path does not exist, then the backend will create that path. This means the user doesn't need to fall into a chicken and egg situation of creating the directory in advance before interacting with it
This resurrects the previously documented but unused "project" option.
This option is required to create buckets (so they are associated with the
right cloud project) but not to access the buckets later on (because their
names are globally unique).
* Remove the (unused) "project" option.
* Mark the "credentials" option as optional; document behavior when
unset.
* Mark the "path" option as deprecated (was: legacy) to match
Terraform's terminology.
Since we don't currently auto-install provisioner plugins this is
currently placed on the providers documentation page and referred to as
the "Provider Plugin Cache". In future this mechanism may also apply to
provisioners, in which case we'll figure out at that point where better
to place this information so it can be referenced from both the provider
and provisioner documentation pages.
This mechanism for configuring plugins is now deprecated, since it's not
capable of declaring plugin versions. Instead, we recommend just placing
plugins into a particular directory, which is now documented on the
main providers documentation page and linked from the more detailed docs
on plugins in general.
Previously we described inline here where to put the .terraformrc file,
but now we have a separate page all about this file that gives us more
room to describe in more detail where the file is placed and what else it
can do.
This function takes a map of lists of strings and inverts it so that
the string values become keys and the keys become items within the
corresponding lists.
Previously we just assumed the reader was familiar with the idea of a
graph but didn't explain it.
Since graphs are an implementation detail of Terraform, rather than
essential information needed for new users, this revises the introduction
text to talk only about _dependencies_, which we assume the user is
familiar with as a more practical concept.
Additionally, Paul Hinze did a great talk on how Terraform uses graphs
at HashiConf 2016 which is good additional content for our existing
"Graph Internals" page, which includes a concise explanation of the
basics of graph theory.
In #15870 we got good feedback that it'd be more useful to have the
various filename-accepting arguments on this provisioner instead accept
strings that represent the contents of such files, so that they can be
generated from elsewhere in the Terraform config.
This change does not achieve that, but it does make room for doing this
later by renaming "minion_config" to "minion_config_file" so that we
can later add a "minion_config" option alongside that takes the file
content, and deprecate "minion_config_file".
Ideally we'd just implement the requested change immediately, but
unfortunately the release schedule doesn't have time for this so this is
a pragmatic change to allow us to make the full requested change at a
later date without backward incompatibilities.
This change is safe because the salt-masterless provisioner has not yet
been included in a release at the time of this commit.
Previously the -upgrade option was covered only on the "terraform init" usage page. It seems also worth mentioning in the main docs on provider versioning, since we're already explaining here other mechanics of the versioning/constraints system.
Terraform modules encapsulate their resources, and dependencies can only
be expressed through outputs, which wasn't clear to me in the existing
documentation. I'm hoping a small change will make that more explicit.
This escapes all characters that might have a special interpretation when embedded into a portion of a URL, including slashes, equals signs and ampersands.
Since Terraform's internals are not 8-bit clean (it assumes UTF-8
strings), we can't implement raw gzip directly. We're going to add
support where it makes sense for passing data to attributes as
base64 so that the result of this function can be used.
* update plugin/provider to make clear this section isn't needed for regular use
* add some links and notes about getting started
* remove the mention of binaries... I 'm not sure it's needed yet
* 'Installing Terraform Providers' section
* sometimes I can't words good
* move the 'installing providers' block
* cleanup of terms
* copy that update to plugins/provider too
The backend has been renamed. Using the old name in the config will
trigger a deprecation warning, but the implementation and the
documentation is the same.
Added locking support via blob leasing (requires that an empty state is
created before any lock can be acquired.
Added support for "environments" in much the same way as the S3 backend.
Fix the -state and -state-out wording to be consistent with other
commands. Remove the erroneous reference to remote state in the website
version of the flag description.
The docs did not mention that it is possible to provide overrides for specific
plugins by placing them into a `terraform.d/plugins/os_arch/` directory inside
the working dir.
Closes#15727.
This restores the earlier behavior of the first positional argument to
terraform init in 0.9, but as a command line option.
The positional argument was removed to improve consistency with other
commands that take a working directory as their first positional argument.
It was originally intended that this functionality would return in a
later release along with some other general improvements to Terraform's
module handling, but we're introducing here an interim solution that
uses the existing module source concept, to allow for easier porting of
workflows that previously depended on the automatic copy behavior.
In a future release this feature may change again as the module
improvements design firms up, but we expect it to be broadly compatible
with this temporary state.
The "terraform init" command has a lot of different functionality now,
making it hard to follow all of the options in the previous presentation.
Instead, here we describe each of the steps and its associated options
separately, hopefully making it easier to understand what each option
relates to.
In addition, much of the detail around backend partial configuration is
factored out into the backend configuration page, where it seems more
"at home"; previously it felt hard to follow exactly how partial
configuration would be used, due to the information on it being split over
two different pages.
This is documented for all other Hashicorp products using this service but
was missed for Terraform. This serves as a disclosure of the fact that
Terraform reaches out to a Hashicorp service, an explanation of the
purpose of that request, and instructions on how to disable it in
environments where it is inappropriate or cannot be supported due to a
firewall or other connectivity restrictions.
Based on feedback from #15569 that the previous example was too abstract
and did not give enough context about what each of the different arguments
mean and how they generalize to other resource types.
The intent here is just to introduce some initial docs on our recommended
way to develop plugins in the same GOPATH as Terraform itself. The
documentation in this area needs some more fundamental rework as it is
rather outdated and mis-organized, but that's outside the scope of what
this change is trying to achieve.
A common reason to want to use `terraform plan` is to have a chance to
review and confirm a plan before running it. If in fact that is the
only reason you are running plan, this new `terraform apply -auto-approve=false`
flag provides an easier alternative to
P=$(mktemp -t plan)
terraform refresh
terraform plan -refresh=false -out=$P
terraform apply $P
rm $P
The flag defaults to true for now, but in a future version of Terraform it will
default to false.
Error loading Terraform: Error downloading modules: error downloading 'ssh://git@bitbucket.org/acme/foo.git?bar': /usr/bin/git exited with 128: Cloning into '.terraform/modules/yadayada'...
invalid command syntax.
fatal: Could not read from remote repository.
Please make sure you have the correct access rights
and the repository exists.
Previously the behavior for -target when given a module address was to
target only resources directly within that module, ignoring any resources
defined in child modules.
This behavior turned out to be counter-intuitive, since users expected
the -target address to be interpreted hierarchically.
We'll now use the new "Contains" function for addresses, which provides
a hierarchical "containment" concept that is more consistent with user
expectations. In particular, it allows module.foo to match
module.foo.module.bar.aws_instance.baz, where before that would not have
been true.
Since Contains isn't commutative (unlike Equals) this requires some
special handling for targeting specific indices. When given an argument
like -target=aws_instance.foo[0], the initial graph construction (for
both plan and refresh) is for the resource nodes from configuration, which
have not yet been expanded to separate indexed instances. Thus we need
to do the first pass of TargetsTransformer in mode where indices are
ignored, with the work then completed by the DynamicExpand method which
re-applies the TargetsTransformer in index-sensitive mode.
This is a breaking change for anyone depending on the previous behavior
of -target, since it will now select more resources than before. There is
no way provided to obtain the previous behavior. Eventually we may support
negative targeting, which could then combine with positive targets to
regain the previous behavior as an explicit choice.
Martin Atkins