Terraform : Specifying the working directory when running terraform apply/plan

Question

Is there any way (or workaround) to specify the working directory when running terraform apply or terraform plan ? For example :

terraform apply working_dir/vpc
terraform apply working_dir/dns
terraform apply working_dir/postgres
terraform apply working_dir/service-a
terraform apply working_dir/service-b

I know there's a target option where we can specify the resources to target. But here I need a folder to have more abstraction. The final goal is to be able to setup the infrastructure running the following commands :

make vpc
make dns
make postgres
make service-a
make service-b

Answer 1

These days you can also use global option -chdir:

The chdir option instructs Terraform to change its working directory to the given directory before running the given subcommand. This means that any files that Terraform would normally read or write in the current working directory will be read or written in the given directory instead.

For example:

terraform -chdir=environments/production apply

Answer 2

You can specify a plan or directory when issuing the apply command. Your examples are valid apply commands.

Usage: terraform apply [options] [dir-or-plan]