Icaching providers download#

$ export TF_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR=/opt/terraform-plugin-dir That way you can share them across projects and users, if only they have sufficient access permissions to that directory.

Icaching providers download#

You can create a single directory for storing your dynamic providersвЂ™ binaries, then set the environment variable вЂњTF_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIRвЂќ and youвЂ™re done! All Terraform commands run when this variable is set will use a shared directory to lookup and download dynamic providers. The solution to the above problem is actually very simple and already included in Terraform, although a little bit hard to find.

A cache directory for providers to the rescue And when every one of them runs вЂњterraform initвЂќ, he or she needs to wait for the binaries to be downloaded. This gets even worse when you have multiple Terraform projects used by a group of people. As you can see, the basic set of providers listed above takes around 100MB вЂ“ not much for today standards, but still. If you have multiple Terraform working directories, you have to download and store your providers for every one of them. However, this approach has also a drawback. This approach is nice, as all your projectsВ are independent and self-contained: you can copy the whole directory to some other place or even machine and everything will still work. rwxr-xr-x 1 piontec piontec 12M Apr 19 07:29 terraform-provider-template_v1.0.0_x4 rwxr-xr-x 1 piontec piontec 12M Apr 19 07:29 terraform-provider-null_v1.0.0_x4 rwxr-xr-x 1 piontec piontec 71M May 24 06:28 terraform-provider-aws_v1.20.0_x4 rwxrwxr-x 1 piontec piontec 239 May 24 06:28 lock.json There you can find the downloaded providers: ll -h. But where does Terraform keep these additional provider binaries? Well, each directory that is used as a root of Terraform project (where you run вЂњterraform initвЂќ) has a hidden вЂњ.terraformвЂќ directory. You can find a list of projects developing these providers on Github. In the example above, we have 3 providers being used: the вЂњnullвЂќ and вЂњtemplateвЂќ provider and a specialized provider for talking with AWS API. So, for example, when youвЂ™re using AWS as an infrastructure provider, and you also use some templating to generate config files, you might run вЂњterraform versionвЂќ and see something like this: $ terraform version Have you noticed, that when you run вЂњterraform initвЂќ, Terraform fetches additional binaries from the Internet? These binaries are called вЂњdynamic providersвЂќ and they are (mainly) interfaces to the infrastructure operators youвЂ™re using in your Terraform code. This allows to cache Terraform providers.

SetВ вЂњTF_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIRвЂќ environment variable to an empty dir, then rerun вЂњterraform initвЂќ to switch to a shared providers directory.