Why am I unable to add a depends_on block to a module with provider configuration?

Question

When writing examples for my Terraform module, I got the error: "Module contains provider configuration" "Providers cannot be configured within modules using count, for_each or depends_on."

I got this error when I tried to add a depends_on block to the module's declaration to avoid trying to run the module plan before the creation of the resource group needed to deploy the resources inside the module.

If I don't add the depends_on block it also breaks, because it can't find the declared resource group that should be created before the module runs to populate the required resource group data source.

I find it is at least uncomfortable to require the removal of the providers block or to remove all the data sources.

I couldn't find any details on this error, or on how to fix it.

Specific line that raises this error inside Terraform's code.

Answer 1

What you have probably looks similar to code below, right?

Root module (eg. terraform.tf):
---

... some code...

module "child_module" {
    count  = var.children_no
    source = "./modules/childmodule.tf"
  ...
}

and

Child module (childmodule.tf)
---

... some code  ...

provider "any_provider" {
    ...
}

So... the sad thing is... you can not do that. If module have any provider at all, you can not 'count' it. :/

That's basically what the error said. You either have to get your provider out of module or get out count from root module.