`terragrunt stack clean` removes local statefiles

[mhulscher]

$ terragrunt --version
terragrunt version v0.78.0

When using local statefiles, the terragrunt stack clean command removes the entire .terragrunt-stack directory structure, including all state files. I use local statefiles when testing my iac components. I can't clean the generated directory structure without first running tf destroy.

I open this issue more as a question of "is this desirable or not?".

[yhakbar]

Hey @mhulscher ,

Yes, it's intended. Is there alternate behavior that's preferred?

[mhulscher]

@yhakbar I would prefer if the clean command only removed files (not directories) that were generated by terragrunt. So if I refactor my terragrunt.stack.hcl to rename a unit or stack, I would like clean to remove those directories' terragrunt.hcl, but not necessarily their state.

Right now, there doesn't seem to be a way to iteratively generate the unit tree, except for running clean followed by generate.

When doing local development, I tend to update my root terragrunt.stack.hcl quite a bit, followed by running terragrunt stack generate, and without running clean first, generate leaves lingering units that may have been removed or renamed.

[yhakbar]

@mhulscher ,

That really isn't in the design of how Stacks were intended to function. The .terragrunt-stack directory is intended to be OK to fully regenerate on-demand based on a terragrunt.stack.hcl file. I think we can improve our documentation to help users mitigate issues related to loosing local state files from regeneration of .terragrunt-stack directories, but it's not going to involve selectively avoiding removal of state files.

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