In earlier Terraform versions we had an extra validation step prior to
the graph walk which tried to partially validate root module input
variable values (just checking their type constraints) and then return
error messages which specified as accurately as possible where the value
had originally come from.
We're now handling that sort of validation exclusively during the graph
walk so that we can share the main logic between both root module and
child module variable values, but previously that shared code wasn't
able to generate such specific information about where the values had
originated, because it was adapted from code originally written to only
deal with child module variables.
Here then we restore a similar level of detail as before, when we're
processing root module variables. For child module variables, we use
synthetic InputValue objects which state that the value was declared
in the configuration, thus causing us to produce a similar sort of error
message as we would've before which includes a source range covering
the argument expression in the calling module block.
Previously we had three different layers all thinking they were
responsible for substituting a default value for an unset root module
variable:
- the local backend, via logic in backend.ParseVariableValues
- the context.Plan function (and other similar functions) trying to
preprocess the input variables using
terraform.mergeDefaultInputVariableValues .
- the newer prepareFinalInputVariableValue, which aims to centralize all
of the variable preparation logic so it can be common to both root and
child module variables.
The second of these was also trying to handle type constraint checking,
which is also the responsibility of the central function and not something
we need to handle so early.
Only the last of these consistently handles both root and child module
variables, and so is the one we ought to keep. The others are now
redundant and are causing prepareFinalInputVariableValue to get a slightly
corrupted view of the caller's chosen variable values.
To rectify that, here we remove the two redundant layers altogether and
have unset root variables pass through as cty.NilVal all the way to the
central prepareFinalInputVariableValue function, which will then handle
them in a suitable way which properly respects the "nullable" setting.
This commit includes some test changes in the terraform package to make
those tests no longer rely on the mergeDefaultInputVariableValues logic
we've removed, and to instead explicitly set cty.NilVal for all unset
variables to comply with our intended contract for PlanOpts.SetVariables,
and similar. (This is so that we can more easily catch bugs in callers
where they _don't_ correctly handle input variables; it allows us to
distinguish between the caller explicitly marking a variable as unset vs.
not describing it at all, where the latter is a bug in the caller.)
In order to handle optional attributes, the Variable type needs to keep
track of the type constraint for decoding and conversion, as well as the
concrete type for creating values and type comparison.
Since the Type field is referenced throughout the codebase, and for
future refactoring if the handling of optional attributes changes
significantly, the constraint is now loaded into an entirely new field
called ConstraintType. This prevents types containing
ObjectWithOptionalAttrs from escaping the decode/conversion codepaths
into the rest of the codebase.
Previously terraform.Context was built in an unfortunate way where all of
the data was provided up front in terraform.NewContext and then mutated
directly by subsequent operations. That made the data flow hard to follow,
commonly leading to bugs, and also meant that we were forced to take
various actions too early in terraform.NewContext, rather than waiting
until a more appropriate time during an operation.
This (enormous) commit changes terraform.Context so that its fields are
broadly just unchanging data about the execution context (current
workspace name, available plugins, etc) whereas the main data Terraform
works with arrives via individual method arguments and is returned in
return values.
Specifically, this means that terraform.Context no longer "has-a" config,
state, and "planned changes", instead holding on to those only temporarily
during an operation. The caller is responsible for propagating the outcome
of one step into the next step so that the data flow between operations is
actually visible.
However, since that's a change to the main entry points in the "terraform"
package, this commit also touches every file in the codebase which
interacted with those APIs. Most of the noise here is in updating tests
to take the same actions using the new API style, but this also affects
the main-code callers in the backends and in the command package.
My goal here was to refactor without changing observable behavior, but in
practice there are a couple externally-visible behavior variations here
that seemed okay in service of the broader goal:
- The "terraform graph" command is no longer hooked directly into the
core graph builders, because that's no longer part of the public API.
However, I did include a couple new Context functions whose contract
is to produce a UI-oriented graph, and _for now_ those continue to
return the physical graph we use for those operations. There's no
exported API for generating the "validate" and "eval" graphs, because
neither is particularly interesting in its own right, and so
"terraform graph" no longer supports those graph types.
- terraform.NewContext no longer has the responsibility for collecting
all of the provider schemas up front. Instead, we wait until we need
them. However, that means that some of our error messages now have a
slightly different shape due to unwinding through a differently-shaped
call stack. As of this commit we also end up reloading the schemas
multiple times in some cases, which is functionally acceptable but
likely represents a performance regression. I intend to rework this to
use caching, but I'm saving that for a later commit because this one is
big enough already.
The proximal reason for this change is to resolve the chicken/egg problem
whereby there was previously no single point where we could apply "moved"
statements to the previous run state before creating a plan. With this
change in place, we can now do that as part of Context.Plan, prior to
forking the input state into the three separate state artifacts we use
during planning.
However, this is at least the third project in a row where the previous
API design led to piling more functionality into terraform.NewContext and
then working around the incorrect order of operations that produces, so
I intend that by paying the cost/risk of this large diff now we can in
turn reduce the cost/risk of future projects that relate to our main
workflow actions.
This is part of a general effort to move all of Terraform's non-library
package surface under internal in order to reinforce that these are for
internal use within Terraform only.
If you were previously importing packages under this prefix into an
external codebase, you could pin to an earlier release tag as an interim
solution until you've make a plan to achieve the same functionality some
other way.
Martin Atkins