Where is a file created via Terraform code stored in Terraform Cloud?

Question

I've been using Terraform for some time but I'm new to Terraform Cloud. I have a piece of code that if you run it locally it will create a .tf file under a folder that I tell him but if I run it with Terraform CLI on Terraform cloud this won't happen. I'll show it to you so it will be more clear for everyone.

resource "genesyscloud_tf_export" "export" {
  directory = "../Folder/"
  resource_types     = []
  include_state_file = false
  export_as_hcl = true
  log_permission_errors = true
} 

So basically when I launch this code with terraform apply in local, it creates a .tf file with everything I need. Where? It goes up one folder and under the folder "Folder" it will store this file.

But when I execute the same code on Terraform Cloud obviously this won't happen. Does any of you have any workaround with this kind of troubles? How can I manage to store this file for example in a github repo when executing github actions? Thanks beforehand

Answer 1

The Terraform Cloud remote execution environment has an ephemeral filesystem that is discarded after a run is complete. Any files you instruct Terraform to create there during the run will therefore be lost after the run is complete.

If you want to make use of this information after the run is complete then you will need to arrange to either store it somewhere else (using additional resources that will write the data to somewhere like Amazon S3) or export the relevant information as root module output values so you can access it via Terraform Cloud's API or UI.

I'm not familiar with genesyscloud_tf_export, but from its documentation it sounds like it will create either one or two files in the given directory:

• genesyscloud.tf or genesyscloud.tf.json, depending on whether you set export_as_hcl. (You did, so I assume it'll generate genesyscloud.tf.
• terraform.tfstate if you set include_state_file. (You didn't, so I assume that file isn't important in your case.

Based on that, I think you could use the hashicorp/local provider's local_file data source to read the generated file into memory once the MyPureCloud/genesyscloud provider has created it, like this:

resource "genesyscloud_tf_export" "export" {
  directory             = "../Folder"
  resource_types        = []
  include_state_file    = false
  export_as_hcl         = true
  log_permission_errors = true
}

data "local_file" "export_config" {
  filename = "${genesyscloud_tf_export.export.directory}/genesyscloud.tf"
}

You can then refer to data.local_file.export_config.content to obtain the content of the file elsewhere in your module and declare that it should be written into some other location that will persist after your run is complete.

This genesyscloud_tf_export resource type seems unusual in that it modifies data on local disk and so its result presumably can't survive from one run to the next in Terraform Cloud. There might therefore be some problems on the next run if Terraform thinks that genesyscloud_tf_export.export.directory still exists but the files on disk don't, but hopefully the developers of this provider have accounted for that somehow in the provider logic.