Load a specific tfvars variables file in my Terraform Cloud workspace

Question

I wish to specify which .tfvars file to load on my workspaces.

Managing variables with files is much easier compared to entering everything in the workspaces. I'll explain.

I have two Worspaces:

• database-qa
• database-prod

Repo for the workspaces looks like this:

├── database/
│   ├── main.tf
│   ├── main.qa.tfvars
│   ├── main.prod.tfvars

I want to load main.qa.tfvars for the database-qa workspace, and main.prod.tfvars for the database-prod workspace, naturally.

I keep the secrets/passwords on the workspace variables for security, and use the tfvars for non-sensitive configurations such as names, versions, etc, for convenience. I find it much easier than adding all to the variables to the workspace in the cloud.

I checked the documentation but I can't find a way to do it.

There is the option to use *.auto.tfvars variable definitions for file names but it will end up loading qa and prod files and that won't work properly.

Is it possible to do it? What are the alternatives?

Answer 1

One solution is to create generic Terraform code on root directory, and create one directory per environments.

├── database/
│   ├── main.tf
│   ├── qa/
│   |   ├── qa.auto.tfvars
│   |   ├── root.tf
│   ├── prod/
│   |   ├── prod.auto.tfvars
│   |   ├── root.tf

And in root.tf, just point to root directory as local module.

module "database" {
  source  = "../"
  cpu = var.cpu
}

[...]

On Terraform Cloud, for each workspace, in General Settings you have to override Terraform Working Directory, and configure directory qa or prod.

And that's it !

Answer 2

After a lot of reading and help with this thread I found a solution/workaround.

First of all, Terraform Cloud does not support specifying the .tfvars file to be loaded in the workspace run, at this time. It is not clear if it is planned on the backlog or not.

Terraform CLI however supports it with the following command and it works fine if you create your pipeline, but risky to run it manually.

-var-file=<filename>.tfvars

Since I'm using Terraform Cloud I ended up with the following configuration. It'll have to be copied to all workspaces, but it works.

variable "TFC_WORKSPACE_NAME" {
  type = string
}

locals {
  env = merge(
    yamldecode(file("env/${var.TFC_WORKSPACE_NAME}.yaml"))
  )
}

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "group" {
  name     = local.env.group
  location = local.env.location
}