terraform/website/docs/cli/commands/apply.html.md

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Command: apply	docs-commands-apply	The `terraform apply` command is used to apply the changes required to reach the desired state of the configuration, or the pre-determined set of actions generated by a `terraform plan` execution plan.

Command: apply

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The terraform apply command is used to apply the changes required to reach the desired state of the configuration, or the pre-determined set of actions generated by a terraform plan execution plan.

Usage

Usage: terraform apply [options] [plan]

By default, apply scans the current directory for the configuration and applies the changes appropriately. However, you can optionally give the path to a saved plan file that was previously created with terraform plan.

If you don't give a plan file on the command line, terraform apply will create a new plan automatically and then prompt for approval to apply it. If the created plan does not include any changes to resources or to root module output values then terraform apply will exit immediately, without prompting.

The command-line flags are all optional. The list of available flags are:

• -compact-warnings - If Terraform produces any warnings that are not accompanied by errors, show them in a more compact form that includes only the summary messages.

• -lock=true - Lock the state file when locking is supported.

• -lock-timeout=0s - Duration to retry a state lock.

• -input=true - Ask for input for variables if not directly set.

• -auto-approve - Skip interactive approval of plan before applying.

• -no-color - Disables output with coloring.

• -parallelism=n - Limit the number of concurrent operation as Terraform walks the graph. Defaults to 10.

• -refresh=true - Update the state for each resource prior to planning and applying. This has no effect if a plan file is given directly to apply.

• -target=resource - A Resource Address to target. For more information, see the targeting docs from terraform plan.

• -var 'foo=bar' - Set a variable in the Terraform configuration. This flag can be set multiple times. Variable values are interpreted as literal expressions in the Terraform language, so list and map values can be specified via this flag.

• -var-file=foo - Set variables in the Terraform configuration from a variable file. If a terraform.tfvars or any .auto.tfvars files are present in the current directory, they will be automatically loaded. terraform.tfvars is loaded first and the .auto.tfvars files after in alphabetical order. Any files specified by -var-file override any values set automatically from files in the working directory. This flag can be used multiple times.

For configurations using the local backend only, terraform apply also accepts the legacy options -state, -state-out, and -backup.

Passing a Different Configuration Directory

Terraform v0.13 and earlier also accepted a directory path in place of the plan file argument to terraform apply, in which case Terraform would use that directory as the root module instead of the current working directory.

That usage is still supported in Terraform v0.14, but is now deprecated and we plan to remove it in Terraform v0.15. If your workflow relies on overriding the root module directory, use the -chdir global option instead, which works across all commands and makes Terraform consistently look in the given directory for all files it would normally read or write in the current working directory.

If your previous use of this legacy pattern was also relying on Terraform writing the .terraform subdirectory into the current working directory even though the root module directory was overridden, use the TF_DATA_DIR environment variable to direct Terraform to write the .terraform directory to a location other than the current working directory.