This chapter does not require that you have any specific technical knowledge. We will mainly use graphical user interfaces and simple Linux and Windows scripts. However, knowledge of Docker is also recommended so that you can complete the Executing Terraform in a Docker container recipe.

Finally, for the IDE, we will use Visual Studio Code, which is available for free at https://code.visualstudio.com/.

The source code for this chapter is available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Terraform-Cookbook/tree/master/CHAP01.

Check out the following video to see the code in action: https://bit.ly/3h9noXz

In this recipe, we will learn how to download and install Terraform on a local machine under a Windows operating system.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, the only prerequisite is that you're on a Windows operating system.

How to do it…

Perform the following steps:

1. Open Windows File Explorer. Choose a location and create a folder called Terraform. We will use this to store the Terraform binary; for example, C:/Terraform.
2. Launch a web browser and go to https://www.terraform.io/downloads.html.
3. Scroll down the page until you reach the package for Windows:

4. Click on the 64-bit link, which targets the Terraform ZIP package for the Windows 64-bit operating system. The package will be downloaded locally.
5. Unzip the content of the downloaded ZIP file into the Terraform folder that we created in step 1:

The last thing we need to do to install Terraform is configure the Path environment variable by adding the path of the Terraform...

In this recipe, we will learn how to install Terraform on a Linux machine using a script.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, the only prerequisites are that you are running a Linux operating system and that you have an unzip utility installed. The gpg, curl, and shasum tools must be installed; they are often installed by default on all Linux distributions.

How to do it…

Perform the following steps:

1. Open a command-line terminal and execute the following script:
   

TERRAFORM_VERSION="0.12.29"

curl -Os https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TERRAFORM_VERSION}/terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_linux_amd64.zip \
&& curl -Os https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TERRAFORM_VERSION}/terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_SHA256SUMS \
&& curl https://keybase.io/hashicorp/pgp_keys.asc | gpg --import \
&& curl -Os https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/${TERRAFORM_VERSION}/terraform_${TERRAFORM_VERSION}_SHA256SUMS...

In this recipe, we will learn how to install Terraform on a Windows machine using a script that uses the Chocolatey software package manager.

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, you'll need to be using a Windows operating system and have Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/) installed, which is a Windows software package manager.

If you don't have Chocolatey installed, you can easily install it by following these steps:

1. Open a PowerShell terminal in administrator mode, as shown in the following screenshot:

2. Then, execute this following script in the terminal:

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))

In the previous recipes of this chapter, we discussed how to install Terraform locally, either manually or via a script, depending on the local operating system.

In this recipe, we will learn how to run Terraform in a Docker container, which will allow us to enjoy the following benefits:

• There is no need to install Terraform locally.
• We can have a Terraform runtime environment independent of the local operating system.
• We can test our Terraform configuration with different versions of Terraform.

Let's get started!

Getting ready

To complete this recipe, you'll need to know about Docker and its commands, as well as how to write Dockerfiles. Please read the documentation for more information: https://docs.docker.com/get-started/overview/

On our local computer, we installed Docker using a tool called Docker Desktop for Windows.

Writing a Terraform configuration file does not require a special code editor. However, popular code editors have adapted and now offer plugins that simplify writing such a file.

In this recipe, we will focus on Visual Studio Code, which has the following benefits:

• It's cross-platform, which means it can be installed on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
• It's free of charge.
• It has a multitude of extensions that cover all the needs of developers on a daily basis.

In this recipe, we will learn how to configure Visual Studio Code so that we can write the Terraform configuration. We'll also see how much faster it is to write code in this way.

Getting ready

For this recipe, you need to have Visual Studio Code installed on your local machine. You can install it by going to https://code.visualstudio.com/.

How to do it…

To use Visual Studio Code with Terraform, we need to install the respective extension and configure it.

To install...

Officially released in May 2019, version 0.12 of Terraform has brought many new features to the language, but also changes, and during this summer 2020, the new Terraform version 0.13 has been released, also providing new features and some changes.

We must take these changes into account before we upgrade the code.

In this recipe, we will discuss how to verify that our Terraform configuration is compatible with version 0.12. After that, we will learn how to migrate our Terraform configuration from version 0.11 to version 0.12 and then to version 0.13.

Getting ready

Before migrating your code from version 0.11 to the latest version (currently 0.13), you will need to have code that works with the latest version of Terraform 0.11, which is 0.11.14. You can download this version from https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.11.14/.

It is important to know that if your Terraform configuration is in version 0.11, it is not possible...