Terraform Provider

• Website: https://www.terraform.io
• 
• Mailing list: Google Groups

Requirements

• Terraform 0.12.x
• Go 1.16 (to build the provider plugin)

Building the Provider

Clone the repository:

$ mkdir -p $GOPATH/src/github.com/terraform-providers; cd "$_"
$ git clone https://github.com/spotinst/terraform-provider-spotinst.git

Choose your build method:

1. make build and install it globally

If you don't mind installing the development version of the provider globally, you can use make build in the provider directory which will build and link the binary into your $GOPATH/bin directory.

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/spotinst/terraform-provider-spotinst
$ make build

2. go build and install it local to your changes

If you would rather install the provider locally and not impact the stable version you already have installed, you can use the ~/.terraformrc file to tell Terraform where your provider is. You do this by building the provider using Go.

$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/spotinst/terraform-provider-spotinst
$ go build -o terraform-provider-spotinst

Then, update your ~/.terraformrc file to point at the location you've built it.

providers {
  spotinst = "${GOPATH}/src/github.com/spotinst/terraform-provider-spotinst/terraform-provider-spotinst"
}

A caveat with this approach is that you will need to run terraform init whenever the provider is rebuilt. You'll also need to remember to comment it/remove it when it's not in use to avoid tripping yourself up.

Developing the Provider

If you wish to work on the provider, you'll first need Go installed on your machine (version 1.15+ is required). You'll also need to correctly setup a GOPATH, as well as adding $GOPATH/bin to your $PATH.

See above for which option suits your workflow for building the provider.

Testing the Provider

In order to test the provider, you can simply run make test.

$ make test

In order to run the full suite of Acceptance tests, run make testacc.

Note: Acceptance tests create real resources, and often cost money to run.

$ make testacc

Dependencies

Terraform providers use Go modules to manage the dependencies. To add or update a dependency, you would run the following (v1.2.3 of foo is a new package we want to add):

$ go get foo@v1.2.3
$ go mod tidy

Stepping through the above commands:

• go get foo@v1.2.3 fetches version v1.2.3 from the source (if needed) and adds it to the go.mod file for use.
• go mod tidy cleans up any dangling dependencies or references that aren't defined in your module file.

If you wish to remove a dependency, you can remove the reference from go.mod and use the same commands above but omit the initial go get.