Terraform Init and Providers

tf files

• After installation, you would start with a directory that has some file with a .tf extension.
• Convention says you should call the main configuration main.tf. but is you don't, terraform will load all files that ends with .tf
• Here's an example of the main configuration part, that should exist within one of you tf files:

 1terraform {
 2  required_providers {
 3    aws = {
 4      source  = "hashicorp/aws"
 5      version = "~> 3.0"
 6    }
 7    google = {
 8      source  = "hashicorp/google"
 9      version = "~> 3.0"
10    }
11  }
12}
13provider "aws" {
14  region  = "us-west-2"
15}

This is the main part of the configuration, and it requires the installation of 2 providers:

• aws provides (developed by Hashicorp)
• google provider (developed by Hashicorp) There is also another component (provider aws) that has configuration for the aws provider (in this case, the default region to use)

Terraform Init

• Use the terraform init command to see how terraform installs both providers.
• Look for the hidden .terraform directory, and look for the installed providers.
• You may also try the following commands:

  • terraform fmt simple syntax corrector that analyzes HCL in a given directory (including sub-directories) and corrects small syntactical issues

  • terraform validate runs a deeper scan of config to show potential issues with more complex problems such as circular dependencies and missing values