Add Terraform cloud support in Atmos

[jamengual]

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Describe the Feature

When using TFC the plan output, plan and apply runs, workspace, and state are managed by TFC remotely which is not compatible with the way Atmos treat workspaces, plan output, and remote state generation today.

1. TFC requires the use of the cloud {} block for the state instead of the currently supported backend types in atmos:

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "PePeInc"

    workspaces {
      name = "my-poc"
    }
  }
}

The use of remote {} id not recommended as it is not being maintained by hashicorp https://hangops.slack.com/archives/C0Z93TPFX/p1690241979618549

The workspace with the name my-poc will be created automatically if it does not exist, therefore Atmos should create this backend.tf file automatically based on a unique identifier that could be maybe something like {workspace} or a combination of {name_pattern}+{workspace} the important distinction here is that these names need to be unique across all the Org inside TFC, Ideally, this could be configurable inside atmos.yaml

2. TFC does not support terraform plan -out flag so this will have to be disabled when TFC mode is enabled.

3. Atmos terraform apply should not look for a saved plan since this is handled by the terraform binary as a API call automatically.

4. Atmos should not look for the workspace locally if that is what is doing today, instead when TFC is enabled it should just run terraform init and that will create the workspace automatically: https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cloud-docs/run/cli

Implicit Workspace Creation
If you configure the cloud block to use a workspace that doesn't yet exist in your organization, Terraform Cloud will create a new workspace with that name when you run terraform init. The output of terraform init will inform you when this happens.

Expected Behavior

no error when running using the cloud block.

Use Case

Currently manual steps are required to make it work with TFC

Describe Ideal Solution

Ideally this will be added as a new intgration

Alternatives Considered

No response

Additional Context

https://developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/tutorials/automation/github-actions

[osterman]

Could you clarify if you're strictly referring to using TFC as a state backend or TFC also as a GitOps platform?

[jamengual]

no, in API driven workflows the only difference is that the git events are managed by the user through github workflows but it triggers the same api calls to interact with TFC, you still use the UI to approve , apply sentinel policies etc. Instead of the TFC github up managing the event.

in local mode it behaves as an storage backend, but at that point I don't see the point of using TFC since it is the same as an S3 bucket.

I'm using api driven workflows in my case.

On Fri, Jul 28, 2023, 6:01 a.m. Erik Osterman (CEO @ Cloud Posse) < @.***> wrote:

Could you clarify if you're strictly referring to using TFC as a state backend or TFC also as a GitOps platform?

— Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub https://github.com/cloudposse/atmos/issues/416#issuecomment-1655648210, or unsubscribe https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAQ3ERDOTGEHC5ANDHVLWGDXSOZZFANCNFSM6AAAAAA225HPJY . You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: @.***>

[jamengual]

https://github.com/cloudposse/atmos/pull/572 closing