Terraform Overview

---

Terraform support is in alpha stage

Pants is currently building support for developing and deploying Terraform. Simple use cases might be supported, but many options are missing.

Please share feedback for what you need to use Pants with your Terraform modules and deployments by either opening a GitHub issue or joining our Slack!

Initial setup

First, activate the relevant backend in pants.toml:

pants.toml

[GLOBAL]
backend_packages = [
  ...
  "pants.backend.experimental.terraform",
  ...
]

The Terraform backend also needs Python to run Pants's analysers. The setting [python].interpreter_constraints will need to be set.

Adding Terraform targets

The Terraform backend has 2 target types:

• terraform_module for Terraform source code
• terraform_deployment for deployments that can be deployed with the experimental-deploy goal

Modules

The tailor goal will automatically generate terraform_module targets. Run pants tailor ::. For example:

❯ pants tailor ::
Created src/terraform/root/BUILD:
  - Add terraform_module target root

Deployments

terraform_deployments must be manually created. The deployment points to a terraform_module target as its root_module field. This module will be the "root" module that Terraform operations will be run on. You can reference vars files with the var_files field. You can have multiple deployments reference the same module:

terraform_module(name="root")
terraform_deployment(name="prod", root_module=":root", var_files=["prod.tfvars"])
terraform_deployment(name="test", root_module=":root", var_files=["test.tfvars"])

Lockfiles

Automatic lockfile management is currently in progress. You can include lockfiles manually as a dependency:

terraform_deployment(name="prod", root_module=":root", dependencies=[":lockfile"])
file(name="lockfile", source=".terraform.lock.hcl")

Basic Operations

Formatting

Run terraform fmt as part of the fix, fmt, or lint goals.

pants fix ::
[INFO] Completed: pants.backend.terraform.lint.tffmt.tffmt.tffmt_fmt - terraform-fmt made no changes.

✓ terraform-fmt made no changes.

Validate

Run terraform validate as part of the check goal.

pants check ::
[INFO] Completed: pants.backend.terraform.goals.check.terraform_check - terraform-validate succeeded.
Success! The configuration is valid.

✓ terraform-validate succeeded.

terraform validate isn't valid for all Terraform modules. Some child modules, in particular those using aliased providers, need to have their providers provided by a "root" module. You can opt these modules out of validate by setting skip_terraform_validate=True. For example:

terraform_module(skip_terraform_validate=True)

Deploying

Terraform deployment support is in alpha stage

Many options and features aren't supported yet. Local state backends aren't supported.

Run terraform apply as part of the experimental-deploy goal. The process is run interactively, so you will be prompted for variables and confirmation as usual.

pants experimental-deploy ::
[INFO] Deploying targets...
--- 8< ---
Do you want to perform these actions?
  Terraform will perform the actions described above.
  Only 'yes' will be accepted to approve.

  Enter a value: yes
--- 8< ---
Apply complete! Resources: 4 added, 0 changed, 0 destroyed.

✓ testprojects/src/terraform/root:root deployed

You can set auto approve by adding -auto-approve to the [download-terraform].args setting in pants.toml. You can also set it for a single pants invocation with --download-terraform-args='-auto-approve', for example pants experimental-deploy "--download-terraform-args='-auto-approve'".