If the user uses the auto-expire value in the backend/swift settings
then swift will automatically delete their Statefile which is likely
something the user doesn't want given how Terraform works.
In the heirarchy, both "Terraform Language" and "Functions" are "up" from
the individual function reference pages, so we'll class them as such to
use the back-facing arrow instead of the forward-facing arrow.
Since the index page is long, by the time the reader reaches the end of
it the relevant portion if the navigation is unlikely to be visible. To
compensate for this, we'll link to the first sub-section and thus give
the user an opportunity to notice the navigation structure for the rest
of the pages.
This has been replaced with an "Expressions" page.
Also includes a number of changes to Markdown style to conform to our
usual conventions, applied automatically by my editor while making these
changes.
This has now been superseded by the expressions.html.md file in the same
directory. As part of deploying this, the former URL for this page must
be redirected to the expressions page to retain a target for any
existing links on third-party sites.
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.
Nikolai Vavilov