In #15884 we adjusted the plan output to give an explicit command to run
to apply a plan, whereas before this command was just alluded to in the
prose.
Since releasing that, we've got good feedback that it's confusing to
include such instructions when Terraform is running in a workflow
automation tool, because such tools usually abstract away exactly what
commands are run and require users to take different actions to
proceed through the workflow.
To accommodate such environments while retaining helpful messages for
normal CLI usage, here we introduce a new environment variable
TF_IN_AUTOMATION which, when set to a non-empty value, is a hint to
Terraform that it isn't being run in an interactive command shell and
it should thus tone down the "next steps" messaging.
The documentation for this setting is included as part of the "...in
automation" guide since it's not generally useful in other cases. We also
intentionally disclaim comprehensive support for this since we want to
avoid creating an extreme number of "if running in automation..."
codepaths that would increase the testing matrix and hurt maintainability.
The focus is specifically on the output of the three commands we give in
the automation guide, which at present means the following two situations:
* "terraform init" does not include the final paragraphs that suggest
running "terraform plan" and tell you in what situations you might need
to re-run "terraform init".
* "terraform plan" does not include the final paragraphs that either
warn about not specifying "-out=..." or instruct to run
"terraform apply" with the generated plan file.
In 3ea1592 the plan rendering was refactored to add an extra indirection
of producing a display-oriented plan object first and then rendering from
that object.
There was a logic error while adapting the existing plan rendering code
to use the new display-oriented object: the core InstanceDiff object sets
the "Destroy" flag (a boolean) for both DiffDestroy and DiffDestroyCreate,
and so this code previously checked r.Destroy to recognize the
"destroy-create" case. This was incorrectly adapted to a check for the
display action being DiffDestroy, when it should actually have been
DiffDestroyCreate.
The effect of this bug was to cause the "(forces new resource)"
annotations to not be displayed on attributes, though the resource-level
information still correctly reflected that a new resource was required.
This fix restores the attribute-level annotations.
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.
Martin Atkins