Experimenting with ConfTest, Terraform & Bazel

Experimenting with using Bazel to handle the build & execution of Terraform files, while providing means of writing tests against the terraform with conftest. Fiddling with the idea of having local tests against the configuration, as well as tests against the terraform plan.

The intention is that Bazel would be responsible for constructing Terraform deployable tarballs, which contains all resolved modules & providers. These would be executed to perform apply, plan and other commands.

Notes

• Terraform init should be treated as a repository rule, based off the .terraform.lock.hcl
• Modules can exist in any directory, and be substituted into other packages as its using the pkg_tar under the hood
• Using a provider to keep track of “runpaths” for any of the commands, making it so these properties can be shared across rules
• Substitutions in command arguments through {variable} and kwargs works great
• Standard pattern for “chaining” commands is needed, so that running one will run the others
• Should it always be the case that Terraform does a plan then apply?
• How should chained commands perform some degree of caching so they aren’t re-running every single time?
• Terraform modules need to exist in multiple forms: local modules & externally sourced modules (e.g. how to integrate with http_archive - or similar)
• Using the pattern of custom rules under bazel/rules/rules_xyz is really nice, the deps.bzl can then just load them
• Rego/OPA are missing vscode extensions for use in gitpod (does vscode have them in devcontainers?)
• Adding the opa toolchain along with the testing process went really well
• Long term rules_toolchains should be external, and rely on a pre-installed tool like toolchains or termtools, that can download these
• How do these rules integrate with different kinds of rules? Is the API solid enough that something like rules_terraform_ext could be made to provide common helpers?
• Should the terraform_workspace really exist? Or should it just be terraform_command with something like rules_terraform_ext filling in the ease-of-use?
• Makefile with bazel can be great for the make help addition