How do I create a plan with cdktf and terraform apply plan?

Terraform CDK for Terraform
1

Hey folks,

I am trying CDKTF for the first time and I want to create a pipeline that produces a valid plan file so that I can terraform apply plan. The documentation is very vague here and it does not say which commands exactly I should run and in what order

cdktf synth?
cdktf diff?
terraform init?
terraform plan?
terraform apply?

I cannot use cdktf deploy because I want the option to manually review the changes/diff/plan in some cases, and that requires the plan and apply to be in separate pipeline steps

2

Hi @mpicard :wave:

Thank you for raising that! Running cdktf synth will be enough from the CDKTF side of things. For the required Terraform commands that would be following Terraform best practices – here is a related link from the Terraform docs that we should’ve linked: Running Terraform in Automation | Terraform | HashiCorp Developer

You would also need to run these Terraform CLI commands for the output directory of every stack (if you have multiple stacks).

Hope that helped!

– Ansgar

3

Hi thanks for answering, the issue is it’s not clear that you must do

cdktf synth
terraform apply cdktf.out/stacks/<stack>/plan
4

Are there any plans in cdktf to provid a more “cdktf native” approach? e.g have something like a --plan option to the cdktf deploy cli? Or will using the terraform internals be the solution to use for the time being?

5

I’m not sure if there are any specific plans, but feel free to create a feature request.

.