tflint VS terraform-docs

‍TFLint is a Terraform linter focused on possible errors, best practices, and style conventions in your Terraform code.

TFlint is a powerful linter for Terraform, designed to catch errors and issues that terraform plan may not detect. As Terraform grows in popularity for infrastructure as code, the need for robust tools to ensure code quality and reliability becomes paramount. TFlint fulfills this need by analyzing Terraform configurations to find problems that are not covered by syntax checks. It checks for things like unsuitable AWS instance types, incorrect IAM policy syntax, and the use of deprecated syntax or features. By integrating TFlint into the development process, users can proactively identify potential problems, improving the stability and efficiency of their infrastructure deployments. This additional layer of validation is crucial for maintaining high standards in complex, cloud-based infrastructures.

Looking at the description, https://github.com/terraform-linters/tflint , I think it's not what I am looking for. The reason I used a different tcp port is to make the health check on load balancer fail. It's also the same as not changing the tcp port but developer making a code change in their javascript, nodejs, java, etc fail to start properly. If that happens, load balancer's health check will fail as well.

TFLint is an open-source infrastructure as code linter tool that helps developers and DevOps teams identify potential issues and errors in their Terraform code by checking the Terraform configuration files for best practices, coding standards, and policy compliance.

Indeed, that is the case, atm. Your comment got me searching a little bit more. It seems that they are planning to implement a flag for small fixes https://github.com/terraform-linters/tflint/issues/266

Sounds like tflint to me!

I created a .tflint.hcl with the following content: https://github.com/terraform-linters/tflint/blob/master/docs/user-guide/config.md (The example)

TFLint: This is a Terraform linter that checks for errors and best practices in your Terraform code. TFLint helps to catch common mistakes, such as variable name clashes, missing required variables, or invalid resource arguments. It also checks for compliance with best practices, such as naming conventions and resource ordering. By using TFLint, you can catch errors early on, which helps to improve the quality of your Terraform code.

tflint: Linter para Terraform, serve para avisar sobre problemas com sintaxe, erros nos principais provedores de nuvem, garantir boas práticas e outras coisas.

Documentation is really important, so having a README.md file inside your Terraform repository that explains how to use the automation (including descriptions of variables and outputs) really help in understanding what has been implemented. To easily generate the description of variables and outputs, you can leverage tfdocs.

‍Terraform-docs is a tool that automatically generates documentation from Terraform modules in various output formats, including markdown, JSON, and others. It's particularly useful for maintaining up-to-date documentation of your Terraform modules' inputs, outputs, providers, and resources.

Earlier this year I wrote about the challenges I faced creating a Terraform module. I mentioned then that I was leveraging terraform-docs and GitHub Actions to automate documentation, but a full workflow walkthrough was out of that post's scope.

### Muti-Stage pipeline for windows trigger: - main variables: terraformDocsVersion: '0.16.0' serviceConnectionName: 'Terraform-SPN-DevOps-MagiconionM' keyvaultName: 'pwd9000-core-kv' pool: vmImage: 'windows-latest' stages: - stage: GenerateTerraformDocumentation jobs: - job: Generate_Terraform_Documentation steps: - checkout: self persistCredentials: true # this allows the later scripts to use the system-provided git token to push changes back to the repo ### Link to key vault. - task: AzureKeyVault@1 inputs: azureSubscription: $(serviceConnectionName) #ADO service connection (Service principal) KeyVaultName: $(keyvaultName) SecretsFilter: 'TerraformDocsPAToken' RunAsPreJob: true displayName: Get PAToken from Keyvault ### Install Terraform-Docs. - powershell: | Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs/releases/download/v$(terraformDocsVersion)/terraform-docs-v$(terraformDocsVersion)-windows-amd64.zip" -OutFile "terraform-docs.zip" Expand-Archive -Path "terraform-docs.zip" -DestinationPath "$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs" -Force $env:Path += ";$(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs" displayName: 'Install terraform-docs' ### Remove all old README.md files and generate new README.md files for each TF module. - powershell: | # Set Modules Root Directory Set-Location "$(Build.SourcesDirectory)\@TF_Modules" # Get all subdirectories (Terraform module directories) $terraformModuleDirs = Get-ChildItem -Path (Get-Location) -Directory # Loop through each directory to cleanup/remove old README files foreach ($dir in $terraformModuleDirs) { # Get all files in the directory $readMeFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $dir.FullName -Filter 'README.md' # Loop through each file in each terraform module foreach ($file in $readMeFiles) { # Check if README file already exists and remove if ($file) { # Remove the file Remove-Item $file.FullName -Confirm:$false Write-Output "Old file '$($file.Name)' removed from '$($dir.FullName)'" } } #After cleanup create a new README.md file with 'terraform-docs' based on latest TF module code in current folder(terraform module) $tfFiles = Get-ChildItem -Path $dir.FullName -Filter *.tf if ($tfFiles.Count -gt 0) { # Create new README.md file $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)\terraform-docs\terraform-docs.exe markdown table $dir.FullName --output-file "README.md" } else { Write-Output "No .tf files found." } } displayName: 'Cleanup and Generate new README for each TF module' ### Commit and push updated README.md files for TF modules. - powershell: | git config --local user.email "[email protected]" git config --local user.name "Terraform Docs" git add *.md git commit -m "Update README.md for each TF module" git push origin HEAD:$(Build.SourceBranchName) displayName: 'Commit and Push updated README.md files for TF modules' env: SYSTEM_ACCESSTOKEN: $(TerraformDocsPAToken)

I'm going to have to figure out how to run terraform-docs.io against each module. I have zero terraform experience.

Terraform-docs: This tool generates documentation for your Terraform modules in various formats, such as Markdown, HTML, and JSON. Terraform-docs parses your Terraform code and extracts documentation from comments, variable and output descriptions, and input/output examples. The tool then generates a table of contents with links to the relevant documentation for each module, which makes it easy to understand the purpose and usage of each module.

Terraform docs

I have been using https://terraform-docs.io to generate documentation of my terraform modules. However creating nested objects with optionals makes the documentation rather ugly and hard to read. See gh issue which also describes this type of issue: https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs/issues/656

I am looking for a way to automate doc creation and updates for ansible roles. I recently discovered terraform-docs and I am curious if there is something similar for ansible.

terraform-docs: https://github.com/terraform-docs/terraform-docs

Do you have other Terraform-related open-source tools that you recommend? Please go ahead and add in the comments!