terraform apply command

The terraform apply command executes the actions proposed in a Terraform plan.

Hands On: Try the Apply Terraform Configuration tutorial to learn how Terraform applies a configuration, how Terraform recovers from errors during apply, and common ways to use this command.

Usage

Usage: terraform apply [options] [plan file]

Automatic Plan Mode

When you run terraform apply without passing a saved plan file, Terraform automatically creates a new execution plan as if you had run terraform plan, prompts you to approve that plan, and takes the indicated actions. You can use all of the planning modes and planning options to customize how Terraform will create the plan.

You can pass the -auto-approve option to instruct Terraform to apply the plan without asking for confirmation.

Saved Plan Mode

When you pass a saved plan file to terraform apply, Terraform takes the actions in the saved plan without prompting you for confirmation. You may want to use this two-step workflow when running Terraform in automation.

Use terraform show to inspect a saved plan file before applying it.

When using a saved plan, you cannot specify any additional planning modes or options. These options only affect Terraform's decisions about which actions to take, and the plan file contains the final results of those decisions.

Plan Options

Without a saved plan file, terraform apply supports all planning modes and planning options available for terraform plan.

• Planning Modes: These include -destroy, which creates a plan to destroy all remote objects, and -refresh-only, which creates a plan to update Terraform state and root module output values.
• Planning Options: These include specifying which resource instances Terraform should replace (-replace), setting Terraform input variables (-var and -var-file), etc.

Apply Options

The following options change how the apply command executes and reports on the apply operation.

• -auto-approve - Skips interactive approval of the plan before applying. Terraform ignores this option when you pass a previously-saved plan file. This is because Terraform interprets the act of passing the plan file as the approval.

• -compact-warnings - Shows any warning messages in a compact form which includes only the summary messages, unless the warnings are accompanied by at least one error and thus the warning text might be useful context for the errors.

• -input=false - Disables all of Terraform's interactive prompts. Note that this also prevents Terraform from prompting for interactive approval of a plan, so Terraform will conservatively assume that you do not wish to apply the plan, causing the operation to fail. If you wish to run Terraform in a non-interactive context, see Running Terraform in Automation for some different approaches.

• -json - Enables the machine readable JSON UI output. This implies -input=false, so the configuration must have no unassigned variable values to continue. To enable this flag, you must also either enable the -auto-approve flag or specify a previously-saved plan.

• -lock=false - Don't hold a state lock during the operation. This is dangerous if others might concurrently run commands against the same workspace.

• -lock-timeout=DURATION - Unless locking is disabled with -lock=false, instructs Terraform to retry acquiring a lock for a period of time before returning an error. The duration syntax is a number followed by a time unit letter, such as "3s" for three seconds.

• -no-color - Disables terminal formatting sequences in the output. Use this if you are running Terraform in a context where its output will be rendered by a system that cannot interpret terminal formatting.

• -parallelism=n - Limit the number of concurrent operations as Terraform walks the graph. Defaults to 10.

• All planning modes and planning options for terraform plan - Customize how Terraform will create the plan. Only available when you run terraform apply without a saved plan file.

For configurations using the local backend only, terraform apply also accepts the legacy options -state, -state-out, and -backup.

Passing a Different Configuration Directory

Terraform v0.13 and earlier also accepted a directory path in place of the plan file argument to terraform apply, in which case Terraform would use that directory as the root module instead of the current working directory.

That usage was deprecated in Terraform v0.14 and removed in Terraform v0.15. If your workflow relies on overriding the root module directory, use the -chdir global option instead, which works across all commands and makes Terraform consistently look in the given directory for all files it would normally read or write in the current working directory.

If your previous use of this legacy pattern was also relying on Terraform writing the .terraform subdirectory into the current working directory even though the root module directory was overridden, use the TF_DATA_DIR environment variable to direct Terraform to write the .terraform directory to a location other than the current working directory.