The new config loader requires some steps to happen in a different
order, particularly in regard to knowing the schema in order to
decode the configuration.
Here we lean directly on the configschema package, rather than
on helper/schema.Backend as before, because it's generally
sufficient for our needs here and this prepares us for the
helper/schema package later moving out into its own repository
to seed a "plugin SDK".
In #15884 we adjusted the plan output to give an explicit command to run
to apply a plan, whereas before this command was just alluded to in the
prose.
Since releasing that, we've got good feedback that it's confusing to
include such instructions when Terraform is running in a workflow
automation tool, because such tools usually abstract away exactly what
commands are run and require users to take different actions to
proceed through the workflow.
To accommodate such environments while retaining helpful messages for
normal CLI usage, here we introduce a new environment variable
TF_IN_AUTOMATION which, when set to a non-empty value, is a hint to
Terraform that it isn't being run in an interactive command shell and
it should thus tone down the "next steps" messaging.
The documentation for this setting is included as part of the "...in
automation" guide since it's not generally useful in other cases. We also
intentionally disclaim comprehensive support for this since we want to
avoid creating an extreme number of "if running in automation..."
codepaths that would increase the testing matrix and hurt maintainability.
The focus is specifically on the output of the three commands we give in
the automation guide, which at present means the following two situations:
* "terraform init" does not include the final paragraphs that suggest
running "terraform plan" and tell you in what situations you might need
to re-run "terraform init".
* "terraform plan" does not include the final paragraphs that either
warn about not specifying "-out=..." or instruct to run
"terraform apply" with the generated plan file.
I made this interface way back with the original backend work and I
guess I forgot to hook it up! This is becoming an issue as I'm working
on our 2nd enhanced backend that requires this information and I
realized it was hardcoded before.
This propertly uses the CLIInit interface allowing any backend to gain
access to this data.
Backends are a mechanism that allow abstracting the behavior of
Terraform CLI from the actual core. This allows us to slip in special
behavior such as state loading, remote operations, etc.
Martin Atkins