@jahed/terraform

A wrapper which downloads and runs Terraform locally via npm.

• Automates and manages your Terraform setup like all your other npm dependencies.
• Downloads the correct version of Terraform regardless of which Operating System you're using.
• Checks downloads against Hashicorp's signed checksums to avoid malicious executables.
• Decouples your project's Terraform version from your system installation.
• New releases are automated to stay in sync with official Terraform releases.

Useful Links

• Development Blog
• Terraform CHANGELOG
• Terraform Releases

Installation

Make sure to install the correct version for your project.

# Latest
npm install @jahed/terraform

# Specific version
npm install @jahed/terraform@1.0.6

Note: If you use required_version in your Terraform configuration, make sure it matches the version in your package.json.

Configuration

To fully automate your Terraform installation including plugins, you can add the following to your package.json.

{
  "scripts": {
    "postinstall": "terraform init && terraform get"
  }
}

Now every time you run npm install it will download, setup and update Terraform.

Usage

In your package.json you can add terraform commands to your scripts.

{
  "scripts": {
    "deploy": "pull-stuff && terraform apply && push-stuff"
  }
}

And run them like any other script.

npm run deploy

You can also run any terraform command within your project directory by prefixing it with npx.

npx terraform --help

Do not run npx terraform outside of your project directory, it will use a completely different package. See Portable Usage for using npx safely or perform a Global Installation to have terraform available everywhere on your system.

Global Installation

Like with any npm package, you can install the package globally and have it available anywhere on your system.

npm install -g @jahed/terraform@1.0.6
terraform --help

Make sure you don't have another terraform already installed in your PATH as it may take priority.

Portable Usage

You can use npx to call Terraform from wherever you want. No installation needed.

npx @jahed/terraform@1.0.6 --help

Remember, you must always prefix it with @jahed/. Otherwise you'll end up calling some other package. If you'd rather not, you can install the package globally on your system or locally for your project.

Download Directory

This package uses find-cache-dir to decide where to download files to. Provide a CACHE_DIR environment variable to override the default cache directory. For more information, check find-cache-dir's documentation.

FAQ & Troubleshooting

How does this package use Terraform?

This package essentially wraps a Terraform executable. The executable is downloaded when the package is first called. Every time you run it, it runs a NodeJS script which ensures Terraform has been downloaded and launches it in a child process, forwarding arguments, stdin, stdout, etc.

How is this package versioned?

For consistency, the version of every release matches the version of Terraform. There are some downsides to this. If I improve this package and add more features, I can't bump its version using Semantic Version (SemVer) like most packages.

For improvements to existing releases, I'm using pre-release versions. This also allows the package to release new changes, like bug fixes, for older versions.

For example, version 1.0.2-0.1.0 might introduce a new feature to Terraform's 1.0.2 release. 0.1.0 being a minor, non-breaking change in Semantic Versioning.

Typically, if you're using the latest version of Terraform, you'll get the latest improvements of this package so you don't need to worry about any of this.

How do I see what this package is doing?

To see what this package is doing (such as creating files and downloading) you can enable debug logs using the NODE_DEBUG environment variable.

NODE_DEBUG='@jahed/terraform' npx terraform --help

The terraform version isn't available.

Submit an issue ticket and I'll publish a new version.

The terraform executable is corrupt.

Remove the package and reinstall it. If that doesn't work, submit an issue ticket and I'll look into it.

License

MIT