Question - Can be used if it is not part of a PR?

[csaavedravanta]

Hello,
I have a question, can TF-via-PR be used to run a terraform command without being part of a PR, for example to execute a plan if the job is not executed in a PR event?
What happens if the event is not a PR, will it run only the plan without doing nothing over any PR since it does not exists in this context?
I see there is an option called comment-pr that I could set as never, but not sure if this will fail since the job won't run over a PR event.
My question is because we have some reusable code that execute the terraform plan , but that is called from some workflow that is called from PR events, but there are also other workflows which are not executed with PR events, like workflow_dispatch or push.

for example:

on:
  workflow_dispatch:
  push:
    branches:
      - main
jobs:
    terraform-plan:
     steps:
      - name: Checkout repo
        ......
      - name: Configure AWS credentials
        ......
      - name: Terraform plan
        uses: op5dev/tf-via-pr@v13.0.2
        with:
          working-directory: terraform/code
          command: plan
          arg-reconfigure: "true"
          arg-backend: "true"
          arg-get: "true"
          arg-backend-config: terraform/code/backed-config.txt
          arg-refresh: "false"
          arg-var-file: terraform/code/variables.tfvars
          plan-encrypt: ${{ github.sha }}
          comment-pr: never

[rdhar]

can TF-via-PR be used to run a terraform command without being part of a PR

Yes, TF-via-PR has been tested to work on non-pull_request event triggers, such as:

• issue_comment
• merge_group
• push

will it run only the plan without doing nothing over any PR since it does not exists in this context

It'll run plan or apply, depending on your command: plan or command: apply input.

• command: plan
  • Generates a plan file.
  • Stores it as a workflow artifact.
• command: apply
  • Retrieves the relevant workflow artifact.
  • Uses the previously-generated plan file.

While TF-via-PR is smart enough to figure out which workflow artifact to retrieve for command: apply from pull_request or push events (as shown in this example), it won't be able to retrieve the correct plan file for workflow_dispatch event. However, command: plan should still work as expected.

[rdhar]

Did you manage to find what you were looking for, @csaavedravanta?

[eumpek]

Hi @rdhar, I would like to thank you for your amazing work on this project.

I am facing a problem and would appreciate your input.

The workflow I'm trying to set up goes like this

1. Dev opens PR and terraform plan is executed on stage environment (stage terraform workspace is used too)
2. Dev merges the PR and apply(push to master) is executed automatically on stage environment.
3. Another action will run on push to master pointing to production this time that will execute plan (also nicely posting a comment to the merged PR)
4. Now I want to manually deploy to prod by running the workflow ( using workflow_dispatch)

This is where I am blocked. If I try to manually run the workflow on master it's not able to figure out the plan file as you pointed out here. I checked the code, and this is happening because of this line here. If it enters this condition, it will correctly infer the PR number from the associated commit and then fetch the plan file.

Is there a reason that you did not allow workflow_dispatch to enter this condition

[rdhar]

Hey @eumpek, thank you for taking the time to share such a detailed breakdown of the problem, genuinely appreciated. I want to give it the space it deserves, and opened issue #459 to track it separately.

[rdhar]

Happy to see this shipped with v13.5.0 (v13), where your contribution has been credited!

Please consider ⭐ this project, if you or your team find it useful.

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@eumpek Thanks once again for your suggestion, and please feel free to let me know if the latest release works for you as intended.