Previously the docs for this were rather confusing because they showed an
option to turn _on_ state locking, even though it's on by default.
Instead, we'll now show -lock=false in all cases and document it as
_disabling_ the default locking.
While working on this I also noticed that the equivalent docs on the
website were differently inconsistent. I've not made them fully consistent
here but at least moreso than they were before.
We previously had only very short descriptions of what
-ignore-remote-version does due to having the documentation for it inline
on many different command pages and -help output.
Instead, we'll now centralize the documentation about this argument on
the remote backend page, and link to it or refer to it from all other
locations. This then allows us to spend more words on discussing what
Terraform normally does _without_ this option and warning about the
consequences of using it.
This continues earlier precedent for some local-backend-specific options
which we also don't recommend for typical use. While this does make these
options a little more "buried" than before, that feels justified given
that they are all "exceptional use only" sort of options where users ought
to learn about various caveats before using them.
While there I also took this opportunity to fix some earlier omissions
with the local-backend-specific options and a few other minor consistency
tweaks.
We have these funny extra options that date back to before Terraform even
had remote state, which we've preserved along the way by most recently
incorporating them as special-case overrides for the local backend.
The documentation we had for these has grown less accurate over time as
the details have shifted, and was in many cases missing the requisite
caveats that they are only for the local backend and that backend
configuration is the modern, preferred way to deal with the use-cases they
were intended for.
We always have a bit of a tension with this sort of legacy option because
we want to keep them documented just enough to be useful to someone who
finds an existing script/etc using them and wants to know what they do,
but not to take up so much space that they might distract users from
finding the modern alternative they should consider instead.
As a compromise in that vein here I've created a new section about these
options under the local backend documentation, which then gives us the
space to go into some detail about the various behaviors and interactions
and also to discuss their history and our recommended alternatives. I then
simplified all of the other mentions of these in command documentation
to just link to or refer to the local backend documentation. My hope then
is that folks who need to know what these do can still find the docs, but
that information can be kept out of the direct path of new users so they
can focus on learning about remote backends instead.
This is certainly not the most ideal thing ever, but it seemed like the
best compromise between the competing priorities I described above.
Laura Pacilio