terraform providers lock command

The terraform providers lock adds new provider selection information to the dependency lock file without initializing the referenced providers.

Introduction

When you run the command, Terraform consults upstream registries and writes provider dependency information into the the dependency lock file. Refer to Dependency Lock File in the Terraform configuration language reference documentation for additional information about the lock file.

The common way to update the dependency lock file is as a side-effect of normal provider installation during terraform init, but there are several situations where that automatic approach may not be sufficient:

• If you are running Terraform in an environment that uses alternative provider installation methods, such as filesystem or network mirrors, normal provider installation will not access the origin registry for a provider and therefore Terraform will not be able to populate all of the possible package checksums for the selected provider versions.

  If you use terraform lock to write the official release checksums for a provider into the dependency lock file then future terraform init runs will verify the packages available in your selected mirror against the official checksums previously recorded, giving additional certainty that the mirror is serving the provider packages it is claiming to.

• If your team runs Terraform across a number of different platforms (e.g. on both Windows and Linux) and the upstream registry for a provider is unable to provide signed checksums using the latest hashing scheme, subsequent runs of Terraform on other platforms may add additional checksums to the lock file. You can avoid that by pre-populating hashes for all of the platforms you intend to use, using the terraform providers lock command.

Usage

Usage: terraform providers lock [options] [providers...]

With no additional command line arguments, terraform providers lock will analyze the configuration in the current working directory to find all of the providers it depends on, and it will fetch the necessary data about those providers from their origin registries and then update the dependency lock file to include a selected version for each provider and all of the package checksums that are covered by the provider developer's cryptographic signature.

If you list one or more provider source addresses on the command line then terraform providers lock will restrict its work only to those providers, leaving the lock entries for other providers (if any) unchanged.

You can customize the default behavior using the following additional option:

• -fs-mirror=PATH - Direct Terraform to look for provider packages in the given local filesystem mirror directory, instead of in upstream registries. The given directory must use the usual filesystem mirror directory layout.

• -net-mirror=URL - Direct Terraform to look for provider packages in the given network mirror service, instead of in upstream registries. The given URL must implement the Terraform provider network mirror protocol.

• -platform=OS_ARCH - Specify a platform you intend to use to work with this Terraform configuration. Terraform will ensure that the providers are all available for the given platform and will save enough package checksums in the lock file to support at least the specified platforms.

  Use this option multiple times to include checksums for multiple target systems.

  Target platform names consist of an operating system and a CPU architecture. For example, linux_amd64 selects the Linux operating system running on an AMD64 or x86_64 CPU.

  There is more detail on this option in the following section.

• -enable-plugin-cache - Enable the usage of the globally configured plugin cache. This will speed up the locking process. This is not enabled by default since the plugin cache is not an authoritative source. As the terraform provider lock command is used to ensure no untrusted provider versions can be used installing the plugins from the cache is considered risky.

Specifying Target Platforms

In your environment you may, for example, have both developers who work with your Terraform configuration on their Windows or macOS workstations and automated systems that apply the configuration while running on Linux.

In that situation, you could choose to verify that all of your providers support all of those platforms, and to pre-populate the lock file with the necessary checksums, by running terraform providers lock and specifying those three platforms:

terraform providers lock \
  -platform=windows_amd64 \ # 64-bit Windows
  -platform=darwin_amd64 \  # 64-bit macOS
  -platform=linux_amd64     # 64-bit Linux

(The above example uses Unix-style shell wrapping syntax for readability. If you are running the command on Windows then you will need to put all of the arguments on a single line, and remove the backslashes and comments.)

Lock Entries for In-house Providers

An in-house provider is one that isn't published on a real Terraform provider registry because it's developed and used only within a particular organization and distributed via either a filesystem mirror or network mirror.

By default, terraform providers lock assumes all providers are available at a Terraform provider registry and tries to contact the origin registries in order to get access to the most detailed information about the provider packages.

To create a lock entry for a particular provider that is available only in a local mirror, you can use either the -fs-mirror or -net-mirror command line options to override the default behavior of consulting the provider's origin registry:

terraform providers lock \
  -fs-mirror=/usr/local/terraform/providers
  -platform=windows_amd64 \
  -platform=darwin_amd64 \
  -platform=linux_amd64 \
  tf.example.com/ourcompany/ourplatform

(The above example uses Unix-style shell wrapping syntax for readability. If you are running the command on Windows then you will need to put all of the arguments on a single line, and remove the backslashes.)

Because the command above includes the provider source address tf.example.com/ourcompany/ourplatform, terraform providers lock will only attempt to access that particular provider and will leave the lock entries for any other providers unchanged. If you have a variety of different providers available from different sources, you can run terraform providers lock multiple times and specify a different subset of your providers each time.

The -fs-mirror and -net-mirror options have the same meaning as filesystem_mirror and network_mirror blocks in the provider installation methods configuration, but specify only a single method in order to be explicit about where you intend to derive the package checksum information from.

Note that only an origin registry can provide official checksums covered by the original developer's cryptographic signature. Lock entries created from filesystem or network mirrors will therefore cover only the exact platforms you requested, and the recorded checksums will be those reported by the mirror, rather than the origin registry's official checksums. If you want to ensure that the recorded checksums are the ones signed by the original provider publisher, run this command without either the -fs-mirror or -net-mirror options to fetch all information from origin registries.

If you wish, you can publish your in-house providers via an in-house provider registry, which will then allow locking and installation of those providers without any special options or additional CLI configuration. For more information, see the provider registry protocol.