When using the enhanced remote backend, a subset of all Terraform
operations are supported. Of these, only plan and apply can be executed
on the remote infrastructure (e.g. Terraform Cloud). Other operations
run locally and use the remote backend for state storage.
This causes problems when the local version of Terraform does not match
the configured version from the remote workspace. If the two versions
are incompatible, an `import` or `state mv` operation can cause the
remote workspace to be unusable until a manual fix is applied.
To prevent this from happening accidentally, this commit introduces a
check that the local Terraform version and the configured remote
workspace Terraform version are compatible. This check is skipped for
commands which do not write state, and can also be disabled by the use
of a new command-line flag, `-ignore-remote-version`.
Terraform version compatibility is defined as:
- For all releases before 0.14.0, local must exactly equal remote, as
two different versions cannot share state;
- 0.14.0 to 1.0.x are compatible, as we will not change the state
version number until at least Terraform 1.1.0;
- Versions after 1.1.0 must have the same major and minor versions, as
we will not change the state version number in a patch release.
If the two versions are incompatible, a diagnostic is displayed,
advising that the error can be suppressed with `-ignore-remote-version`.
When this flag is used, the diagnostic is still displayed, but as a
warning instead of an error.
Commands which will not write state can assert this fact by calling the
helper `meta.ignoreRemoteBackendVersionConflict`, which will disable the
checks. Those which can write state should instead call the helper
`meta.remoteBackendVersionCheck`, which will return diagnostics for
display.
In addition to these explicit paths for managing the version check, we
have an implicit check in the remote backend's state manager
initialization method. Both of the above helpers will disable this
check. This fallback is in place to ensure that future code paths which
access state cannot accidentally skip the remote version check.
I've seen folks ask about how to express this in resource address syntax
a number of times now, so adding this example here to illustrate how it
looks when there are multiple levels of module to traverse through.
This is redundant with other information further up the page, but having
it as an entirely separate example gives an opportunity to include more
introductory text to explain what the example is showing.
Alisdair McDiarmid