Terraform is interpretive and doesn’t need to be compiled, so why have a build process?
While Terraform does not have a compiler, it does have the option to validate the syntax of a plan, so this is used as the CI process to “fail fast”, to find syntax errors before attempting to execute against an environment. Add these steps in your build.tsk file.
terraform init -upgrade -input=false
terraform validate
The output of the CI process is a portable, re-usable, release package (release.ps1). This can be used to perform Terraform application from the users desktop against their Visual Studio Pro or Test subscription in azure, using the same mechanism the pipeline will use.
To further verify the release package, it is executed in PLAN mode, which ensures the plan can be executed and provides a what-if analysis. The most important outcome is what will happen in production, so add the following to your CDAF.solution.
defaultEnvironment=PROD Release plan
If you prefer condition plan execution, i.e. against different targets, the Feature Branch Execution capability can be used, create feature-branch.properties.
feature=TEST Release plan
hot-fix=PROD Release plan
Define a configuration trigger, e.g. properties.cm
context target deployTaskOverride publisher_email azure_credentials azure_groups
local TEST terraform.tsk me@example.com Non-prod-Account AZT_TEST
local PROD terraform.tsk me@example.com Production-Account AZT_PROD
Create the terraform.tsk
VARCHK
terraform $OPT_ARG
echo "[$TASK_NAME] Do not proceed if action is plan only."
if ( $OPT_ARG -ne 'apply --auto-approve' ) { exit 0 }
echo "[$TASK_NAME] Only list details if action was apply"
terraform state list
VARCHK is covered in the next page, Configuration Management.
an example output of a plan execution.
terraform plan
Running plan in the remote backend. Output will stream here. Pressing Ctrl-C
will stop streaming the logs, but will not stop the plan running remotely.
Preparing the remote plan...
To view this run in a browser, visit:
https://app.terraform.io/app/example/prod/runs/run-5fsY2cdKsqVfBVXX
Waiting for the plan to start...
Plan: 3 to add, 0 to change, 0 to destroy.