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

layout	page_title	sidebar_current	description
docs	Command: apply	docs-commands-apply	The `terraform apply` command executes the actions proposed in a Terraform plan.

Command: apply

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The terraform apply command executes the actions proposed in a Terraform plan.

The most straightforward way to use terraform apply is to run it without any arguments at all, in which case it will automatically create a new execution plan (as if you had run terraform plan) and then prompt you to approve that plan, before taking the indicated actions.

Another way to use terraform apply is to pass it the filename of a saved plan file you created earlier with terraform plan -out=..., in which case Terraform will apply the changes in the plan without any confirmation prompt. This two-step workflow is primarily intended for when running Terraform in automation.

Usage

Usage: terraform apply [options] [plan]

The behavior of terraform apply differs significantly depending on whether you pass it the filename of a previously-saved plan file.

In the default case, with no saved plan file, terraform apply effectively runs terraform plan internally itself in order to propose a new plan. In that case, terraform apply supports all of the same Planning Modes and Planning Options that terraform plan would accept, so you can customize how Terraform will create the plan. Terraform will prompt you to approve the plan before taking the described actions, unless you override that prompt using the -auto-approve option.

If you pass the filename of a previously-saved plan file, none of the options related to planning modes and planning options are supported, because Terraform will instead use the options that you set on the earlier terraform plan call that created the plan file.

The following options allow you to change various details about how the apply command executes and reports on the apply operation. If you are running terraform apply without a previously-saved plan file, these options are in addition to the planning modes and planning options described for terraform plan.

• -auto-approve - Skips interactive approval of plan before applying. This option is ignored when you pass a previously-saved plan file, because Terraform considers you passing the plan file as the approval and so will never prompt in that case.

• -compact-warnings - Shows any warning messages in a compact form which includes only the summary messages, unless the warnings are accompanied by at least one error and thus the warning text might be useful context for the errors.

• -input=false - Disables all of Terraform's interactive prompts. Note that this also prevents Terraform from prompting for interactive approval of a plan, so Terraform will conservatively assume that you do not wish to apply the plan, causing the operation to fail. If you wish to run Terraform in a non-interactive context, see Running Terraform in Automation for some different approaches.

• -lock=false - Disables Terraform's default behavior of attempting to take a read/write lock on the state for the duration of the operation.

• -lock-timeout=DURATION - Unless locking is disabled with -lock=false, instructs Terraform to retry acquiring a lock for a period of time before returning an error. The duration syntax is a number followed by a time unit letter, such as "3s" for three seconds.

• -no-color - Disables terminal formatting sequences in the output. Use this if you are running Terraform in a context where its output will be rendered by a system that cannot interpret terminal formatting.

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

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 was deprecated in Terraform v0.14 and removed 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.