So far the output command has had a default output format intended for
human consumption and a JSON output format intended for machine
consumption.
However, until Terraform v0.14 the default output format for primitive
types happened to be _almost_ a raw string representation of the value,
and so users started using that as a more convenient way to access
primitive-typed output values from shell scripts, avoiding the need to
also use a tool like "jq" to decode the JSON.
Recognizing that primitive-typed output values are common and that
processing them with shell scripts is common, this commit introduces a new
-raw mode which is explicitly intended for that use-case, guaranteeing
that the result will always be the direct result of a string conversion
of the output value, or an error if no such conversion is possible.
Our policy elsewhere in Terraform is that we always use JSON for
machine-readable output. We adopted that policy because our other
machine-readable output has typically been complex data structures rather
than single primitive values. A special mode seems justified for output
values because it is common for root module output values to be just
strings, and so it's pragmatic to offer access to the raw value directly
rather than requiring a round-trip through JSON.
As of Terraform 0.13+, the get-plugins command has been
superceded by new provider installation mechanisms, and
general philosophy (providers are always installed, but
the sources may be customized). Updat the init command
to give users a warning if they are setting this flag,
to encourage them to remove it from their workflow, and
update relevant docs and docstrings as well
I originally drafted these docs in a context where I was relying on
GitHub's Markdown renderer, and carelessly imported them into the
Terraform website without verifying that the website's Markdown renderer
could process it. This particular quirk has bitten us before: the website
Markdown parser expects follow-on paragraphs in a list item to be indented
at least four spaces, and with less than that it ignores the leading
whitespace altogether and just understands a normal paragraph.
This change will cause the follow-on paragraphs to now correctly render
as part of the bullet points they are intended to be attached to.
We've historically made statements like this in response to requests for
more customization to the "terraform fmt" behavior, but the documentation
itself was somewhat vague about the intended goals of this command.
This is an attempt to be more explicit that consistency between codebases
is the primary goal of this command, and that the examples in the
Terraform documentation are our main guide for what is "idiomatic style"
when adding additional rules over time.
Nothing here is intended to be new policy, but instead as codifying
positions we've taken elsewhere in the past in the hope of allowing users
to decide how (and whether) they wish to make use of this tool.
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.
The new nav structure demanded a few new pages that give context about a feature
or workflow. In a few cases, they take text from an existing page.
Co-authored-by: Tu Nguyen <im2nguyen@users.noreply.github.com>
Co-authored-by: Judith Malnick <judith.patudith@gmail.com>
The example configuration now uses Terraform 0.12+ syntax, and the
output examples are up to date with the current text UI. We also add an
explicit recommendation to use the `-json` option for a consistent and
stable output format, for use in automation.
Several `terraform` subcommands include sub-sub-commands; with our old sidebar
system, viewing those took you to an isolated "island" nav sidebar, away from
the main docs. The new navigation will adopt all these pages, so we don't need
to exile the reader to odd places.
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.
My initial motivation here was to update the example output from
Terraform's top-level help list to match recent updates in the layout
and language used.
However, while here I took the opportunity to update some dated language
that was not consistent with our modern documentation writing style,
in particular including a totally unnecessary and potentially-alienating
claim that Terraform is "very easy to use". Our modern writing style
discourages this sort of "boastful" language and encourages us to focus on
the facts at hand.
* ADD CLI option position for force-unlock command
* Update force-unlock.html.markdown
Made a change to also include the missing [DIR]
Co-authored-by: Petros Kolyvas <petros@hashicorp.com>
For normal provider installation we want to associate each provider with
a selected version number and find a suitable package for that version
that conforms to the official hashes for that release.
Those requirements are very onerous for a provider developer currently
testing a not-yet-released build, though. To allow for that case this new
CLI configuration feature allows overriding specific providers to refer
to give local filesystem directories.
Any provider overridden in this way is not subject to the usual
restrictions about selected versions or checksum conformance, and
activating an override won't cause any changes to the selections recorded
in the lock file because it's intended to be a temporary setting for one
developer only.
This is, in a sense, a spiritual successor of an old capability we had to
override specific plugins in the CLI configuration file. There were
some vestiges of that left in the main package and CLI config package
but nothing has actually been honoring them for several versions now and
so this commit removes them to avoid confusion with the new mechanism.
This includes both the main documentation about the lock file itself and
changes to related documentation about Terraform commands that interact
with the lock file.
We will likely continue to update this first pass of documentation as we
get feedback and questions during the prerelease period.
* 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>
In addition to the directories previously listed, Terraform looks in the
CLI config directory ($HOME/.terraform.d/plugins on macOS/Linux/UNIX,
and %APPDATA%/terraform.d/plugins on Windows). List this in the
documentation for clarity.
We also add a note about the working directory relative "vendor"
location, ./terraform.d/plugins.
This new option is intended to address the previous inconsistencies where
some older subcommands supported partially changing the target directory
(where Terraform would use the new directory inconsistently) where newer
commands did not support that override at all.
Instead, now Terraform will accept a -chdir command at the start of the
command line (before the subcommand) and will interpret it as a request
to direct all actions that would normally be taken in the current working
directory into the target directory instead. This is similar to options
offered by some other similar tools, such as the -C option in "make".
The new option is only accepted at the start of the command line (before
the subcommand) as a way to reflect that it is a global command (not
specific to a particular subcommand) and that it takes effect _before_
executing the subcommand. This also means it'll be forced to appear before
any other command-specific arguments that take file paths, which hopefully
communicates that those other arguments are interpreted relative to the
overridden path.
As a measure of pragmatism for existing uses, the path.cwd object in
the Terraform language will continue to return the _original_ working
directory (ignoring -chdir), in case that is important in some exceptional
workflows. The path.root object gives the root module directory, which
will always match the overriden working directory unless the user
simultaneously uses one of the legacy directory override arguments, which
is not a pattern we intend to support in the long run.
As a first step down the deprecation path, this commit adjusts the
documentation to de-emphasize the inconsistent old command line arguments,
including specific guidance on what to use instead for the main three
workflow commands, but all of those options remain supported in the same
way as they were before. In a later commit we'll make those arguments
produce a visible deprecation warning in Terraform's output, and then
in an even later commit we'll remove them entirely so that -chdir is the
single supported way to run Terraform from a directory other than the
one containing the root module configuration.
We previously had this just stubbed out because it was a stretch goal for
the v0.13.0 release and it ultimately didn't make it in.
Here we fill out the existing stub -- with a minor change to its interface
so it can access credentials -- with a client implementation that is
compatible with the directory structure produced by the
"terraform providers mirror" subcommand, were the result to be published
on a static file server.
Terraform's design assumes that each remote object in Terraform's care is
bound to one resource instance and one alone. If the same object is bound
to multiple instances then confusing behavior will often result, such as
two resource configurations competing to update a single object, or
objects being "left behind" when all existing Terraform deployments are
destroyed.
This assumption was previously only implied, though. This change is an
attempt to be more explicit about it, although these are additions to some
older documentation sections that have not been revised for some time and
so this is just a best effort to make this information discoverable
without getting drawn into a full-on reorganization of these sections.
While revising this there were some particular oddities that I decided to
revise while I was there, but I'll leave a fuller revision of this older
content for a later commit when we have more time to review it in greater
detail.
* Make sidebar nav in language docs more intuitive
* Minor display fixes for registry docs
* Explain providers in the registry in the providers index
* Revise a bunch of language docs around provider reqs
This is mostly an effort to smooth out some of the explanations, make sure
things are presented in a helpful order, make sure terminology lines up, draw
connections between related concepts, make default behavior more apparent, and
the like. It shouldn't include very much new information, but there might be one
or two things that came out of a conversation somewhere.
Co-authored-by: Judith Malnick <judith@hashicorp.com>
Although this command is removed in Terraform 0.13, our documentation is
for all versions of Terraform that remain in common use and keeping this
documented will be helpful for folks who are still using Terraform 0.11
and planning their upgrades to Terraform 0.12.
Both of the upgrade commands now include notes that they are only
available in their specific major version, along with a link to the
relevant upgrade guide for other background information about the upgrade,
in case the user finds the command documentation first. (The command docs
are, I think, a little more discoverable than the upgrade guides.)
This new command is intended to make it easy to create or update a mirror
directory containing suitable providers for the current configuration,
producing a layout that is appropriate both for a filesystem mirror or,
if copied into the document root of an HTTP server, a network mirror.
This initial version is not customizable aside from being able to select
multiple platforms to install packages for.
Future iterations of this could include commands to turn the JSON index
generation on and off, or to instruct it to produce the unpacked directory
layout instead of the packed directory layout as it currently does. Both
of those options would make the generated directory unsuitable to be
a network mirror, but it would still work as a filesystem mirror.
In the long run this will hopefully form part of a replacement workflow to
terraform-bundle as a way to put copies of providers somewhere so we don't
need to re-download them every time, but some other changes will be needed
outside of just this command before that'd be true, such as adding support
for network and/or filesystem mirrors in Terraform Enterprise.
The "apply" documentation contained a simple typo, while the "plan"
documentation contained outdated information about using
"terraform plan PLANFILE" to view a plan. The latter is now a separate
command entirely, since Terraform 0.12: "terraform show PLANFILE".
This is a baby-step towards an intended future where all Terraform actions
which have side-effects in either remote objects or the Terraform state
can go through the plan+apply workflow.
This initial change is focused only on allowing plan+apply for changes to
root module output values, so that these can be written into a new state
snapshot (for consumption by terraform_remote_state elsewhere) without
having to go outside of the primary workflow by running
"terraform refresh".
This is also better than "terraform refresh" because it gives an
opportunity to review the proposed changes before applying them, as we're
accustomed to with resource changes.
The downside here is that Terraform Core was not designed to produce
accurate changesets for root module outputs. Although we added a place for
it in the plan model in Terraform 0.12, Terraform Core currently produces
inaccurate changesets there which don't properly track the prior values.
We're planning to rework Terraform Core's evaluation approach in a
forthcoming release so it would itself be able to distinguish between the
prior state and the planned new state to produce an accurate changeset,
but this commit introduces a temporary stop-gap solution of implementing
the logic up in the local backend code, where we can freeze a snapshot of
the prior state before we take any other actions and then use that to
produce an accurate output changeset to decide whether the plan has
externally-visible side-effects and render any changes to output values.
This temporary approach should be replaced by a more appropriately-placed
solution in Terraform Core in a release, which should then allow further
behaviors in similar vein, such as user-visible drift detection for
resource instances.
* website: Edit text of new TF_IGNORE env var docs
Fixing one broken link, and tidying the sentences a bit.
* typo
Co-authored-by: Pam Selle <pam@hashicorp.com>
Martin Atkins