There are situations where one may need to write to a set, list, or map
more than once per single TF operation (apply/refresh/etc). In these
cases, further writes using Set (example: d.Set("some_set", newSet))
currently create unstable results in the set writer (the name of the
writer layer that holds the data set by these calls) because old keys
are not being cleared out first.
This bug is most visible when using sets. Example: First write to set
writes elements that have been hashed at 10 and 20, and the second write
writes elements that have been hashed at 30 and 40. While the set length
has been correctly set at 2, since a set is basically a map (as is the
entire map writer) and map results are non-deterministic, reads to this
set will now deliver unstable results in a random but predictable
fashion as the map results are delivered to the caller non-deterministic
- sometimes you may correctly get 30 and 40, but sometimes you may get
10 and 20, or even 10 and 30, etc.
This problem propagates to state which is even more damaging as unstable
results are set to state where they become part of the permanent data
set going forward.
The problem also applies to lists and maps. This is probably more of an
issue with maps as a map can contain any key/value combination and hence
there is no predictable pattern where keys would be overwritten with
default or zero values. This is contrary to complex lists, which has
this problem as well, but since lists are deterministic and the length
of a list properly gets updated during the overwrite, the problem is
masked by the fact that a read will only read to the boundary of the
list, skipping any bad data that may still be available due past the
list boundary.
This update clears the child contents of any set, list, or map before
beginning a new write to address this issue. Tests are included for all
three data types.
The flatmapped representation of state prior to this commit encoded maps
and lists (and therefore by extension, sets) with a key corresponding to
the number of elements, or the unknown variable indicator under a .# key
and then individual items. For example, the list ["a", "b", "c"] would
have been encoded as:
listname.# = 3
listname.0 = "a"
listname.1 = "b"
listname.2 = "c"
And the map {"key1": "value1", "key2", "value2"} would have been encoded
as:
mapname.# = 2
mapname.key1 = "value1"
mapname.key2 = "value2"
Sets use the hash code as the key - for example a set with a (fictional)
hashcode calculation may look like:
setname.# = 2
setname.12312512 = "value1"
setname.56345233 = "value2"
Prior to the work done to extend the type system, this was sufficient
since the internal representation of these was effectively the same.
However, following the separation of maps and lists into distinct
first-class types, this encoding presents a problem: given a state file,
it is impossible to tell the encoding of an empty list and an empty map
apart. This presents problems for the type checker during interpolation,
as many interpolation functions will operate on only one of these two
structures.
This commit therefore changes the representation in state of maps to use
a "%" as the key for the number of elements. Consequently the map above
will now be encoded as:
mapname.% = 2
mapname.key1 = "value1"
mapname.key2 = "value2"
This has the effect of an empty list (or set) now being encoded as:
listname.# = 0
And an empty map now being encoded as:
mapname.% = 0
Therefore we can eliminate some nasty guessing logic from the resource
variable supplier for interpolation, at the cost of having to migrate
state up front (to follow in a subsequent commit).
In order to reduce the number of potential situations in which resources
would be "forced new", we continue to accept "#" as the count key when
reading maps via helper/schema. There is no situation under which we can
allow "#" as an actual map key in any case, as it would not be
distinguishable from a list or set in state.
Chris Marchesi