We typically try to avoid making subjective, boasty claims in our
documentation in recent times, but there remained both some older
documentation that we've not recently revised and also some newer examples
that are, in retrospect, also perhaps more "boasty" than they need to be.
We prefer not to use this sort of boasty language because not everyone
using Terraform has the same background and experience, and so what is
"easy" or "intuitive" to one person may not be so to another person, and
that should not suggest that the second person is in any way wrong or
inadequate.
In reviewing some of our use of the word "easy" here I tried as much as
possible to surgically revise the existing content without getting drawn
into a big rewrite, but in some cases the content was either pretty
unsalvageable (due to talking about obsolete features that were removed
long ago) or required some broader changes to make the result hopefully
still get the same facts across. In those cases I've both removed some
content entirely or adjusted larger paragraphs.
This was not an exhaustive review and so I'm sure there's still plenty of
room for similar improvements elsewhere. I also resisted the urge to
update some pages that contain outdated information about currently-active
features.
* website: Update all Learn crosslinks
The URL structure on Learn recently changed, so it's time to update some URLs.
Co-authored-by: Tu Nguyen <im2nguyen@users.noreply.github.com>
This guide now lives at:
- https://learn.hashicorp.com/terraform#getting-started
...and terraform.io has been redirecting to there for quite a while. This commit
removes the extra copy so that the text of the two versions doesn't drift, and
updates existing links to point to the new location.
The Terraform Enterprise brand has now been split into two parts:
- Terraform Cloud is the application that helps teams use Terraform together,
with remote state storage, a shared run environment, etc.
- Terraform Enterprise is the on-premise distribution that lets enterprises run
a private instance of the Terraform Cloud application.
The former TFE docs have been split accordingly.
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.
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.)
Our prevailing writing style is to place punctuation outside of quotes, since in many contexts Terraform itself treats punctuation within quotes as significant and so it can be confusing to use punctuation in quotes in our prose.
This is a significant rework of the Modules getting started guide to be
in terms of the Consul module available via the Terraform Registry. This
allows us to introduce the registry as part of the tutorial, and also
gives us some auto-generated documentation to link to as context for
the tutorial.
This new module is designed pretty differently than the one we formerly
used, and in particular it doesn't expose any server addresses for the
created Consul cluster -- due to using an auto-scaling group -- and thus
we're forced to use the (arguably-less-compelling) auto-scaling group name
for our output example.
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.
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.
* 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
Martin Atkins