So, I have a constellation of Terraform projects. I just built an image of a specific application, which ultimately ends-up updating the tags in the auto-vars file of the corresponding project in the Terraform repository and then applies it, and I noticed that the mtimes are really wacky. It's the 28th, today. The state file shows an mtime of three weeks ago (the 5th) even though I've probably done dozens of tangible releases since then, including having just updated these and applied them a moment ago. The mtime on the auto-vars file and the timestamps in the actual Docker image tags prove it (while taking my word for it that these were applied soon after updating the auto-vars).
$ ls -la
total 56
drwxr-xr-x 3 dustin dustin 4096 May 28 14:38 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 dustin dustin 4096 May 4 12:13 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 4300 May 16 12:34 main.tf
-rwxr-xr-x 1 dustin dustin 49 May 4 12:13 run.sh
drwxr-xr-x 4 dustin dustin 4096 May 5 15:30 .terraform
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 298 May 28 14:38 terraform.auto.tfvars.json
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 1409 May 5 15:30 .terraform.lock.hcl
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 17556 May 5 15:29 terraform.tfstate.backup
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 196 May 4 12:13 variables.tf
$ ls -la .terraform
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 4 dustin dustin 4096 May 5 15:30 .
drwxr-xr-x 3 dustin dustin 4096 May 28 14:38 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 dustin dustin 4096 May 5 15:29 modules
drwxr-xr-x 3 dustin dustin 4096 May 5 15:30 providers
-rw-r--r-- 1 dustin dustin 1600 May 5 15:29 terraform.tfstate
$ cat terraform.auto.tfvars.json
{
"taskdefinition-web-fq-docker-image": "326764833890.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/workflow-web:eb241c0",
"taskdefinition-app-fq-docker-image": "326764833890.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/workflow-api:20230528143624-abca7cf",
"taskdefinition-release-version": "20230528143624-abca7cf"
}
The application I just did showed actions taken:
Plan: 1 to add, 1 to change, 1 to destroy.
module.task-definition.aws_ecs_task_definition.task-definition-default: Destroying... [id=workflow-api-staging]
module.task-definition.aws_ecs_task_definition.task-definition-default: Destruction complete after 1s
module.task-definition.aws_ecs_task_definition.task-definition-default: Creating...
module.task-definition.aws_ecs_task_definition.task-definition-default: Creation complete after 0s [id=workflow-api-staging]
module.load-balancer.module.service.aws_ecs_service.default: Modifying... [id=arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:326764833890:service/internal-webserver-ssl/staging-workflow-api]
module.load-balancer.module.service.aws_ecs_service.default: Modifications complete after 0s [id=arn:aws:ecs:us-east-1:326764833890:service/internal-webserver-ssl/staging-workflow-api]
Apply complete! Resources: 1 added, 1 changed, 1 destroyed.
Can someone explain how Terraform manages the state mtimes? The documentation doesn't seem to go into detail.
