Deploying your first cloud resources with Terraform often means juggling commands like terraform fmt, terraform plan, and terraform apply. It can feel a bit like a repetitive dance. But what if I told you there’s a simpler way? Just one command, you can seamlessly execute the entire Terraform workflow – from code formatting to applying changes in your cloud environment.

The one command mentioned is a Bash Script, where you only need to specify the environment in which you want to provision your resources. The code can be found at the end of the blog on my github.

This Bash script is designed to simplify the process of managing Terraform deployments across different environments (dev, test, and prod).

Script Overview

1. set -euo pipefail

   • set -e: Exit immediately if any command exits with a non-zero status (i.e., encounters an error).
   • set -u: Treat references to unset variables as errors.
   • set -o pipefail: Consider a pipeline as failed if any command in the pipeline fails.

2. set -x

   • Enable debugging mode, printing each command to stderr before executing it. Useful for understanding the script’s execution flow.

3. run_terraform_command function:

   • A function that takes a Terraform command as an argument, executes it, and handles errors.
   • The command is echoed for visibility.
   • The exit status of the command is checked, and if it’s non-zero, an error message is printed, and the script exits with the same status.

4. Terraform Commands:

   • terraform version: Retrieves and prints the Terraform version.
   • terraform init: Initializes the Terraform working directory.
   • terraform fmt: Formats the Terraform code.

5. Command-line Options:

   • -e: Specifies the target environment (e.g., dev, test, or prod).
   • -d: Indicates the intention to delete resources.

6. Parsing Command-line Options:

   • The script uses getopts to parse command-line options and sets corresponding variables (environment_choice and delete_environment).

7. Environment Validation:

   • Ensures that the specified environment is one of the valid choices (dev, test, or prod).

8. Loop Through Environments:

   • Iterates over the defined environments.
   • For the chosen environment, it executes Terraform commands (plan and either apply or destroy based on the user’s choice).

Executing the bash script.

Here are the commands to run the script:

Code can be found here