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Amen! I found it excruciating that the language was always a few simple steps away from being homomorphic to JSON. I desperately needed to be able to manipulate

Amen! I found it excruciating that the language was always a few simple steps away from being homomorphic to JSON. I desperately needed to be able to manipulate it as data structures, not as strings. All of the ways I found to work around its limitations made me wish for something else entirely.

Znafon 5y ago
You can use JSON for your configuration: https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html !
cube2222 5y ago
You can write Terraform using JSON if you want to: https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html Or do you mean something deeper?
- thanatos519 5y ago
  I mean being able to reliably convert HCL↔JSON.
rad_gruchalski 5y ago
It's a language for a reason, there's a grammar, parser, lexer, ast. What's the problem?
garettmd 5y ago
Have you used it since they introduced HCL2? It supports other data structures much better than it used to. Maps, lists, sets, etc. are much easier to work with.
- throwaway894345 5y ago
  Still a far cry away from a proper programming language, which is what we need. For example, if you want to loop over some config and generate a resource for each config, but the resources need different providers (e.g., different AWS accounts) then you just can't do it. Further, if you just want a little function, you have to build a fully fledged module. Then there are the crazy namespaces (`var`, `local`, `resource`, `module`, etc).
  - clipradiowallet 5y ago
    Yes you can... assuming your config is a map, include a key for "provider", and set it appropriately. EG in your example for multiple AWS accounts, define providers aliased as `aws.account1`, `aws.account2`, and so on. Reference those provider aliases in your map you are iterating through, and set the provider to that value.
    - throwaway894345 5y ago
      I'm 99% sure that will fail with an error because "provider" can't be set dynamically. See this issue, for example: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/24476 https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/24476

Znafon 5y ago

You can use JSON for your configuration: https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html !

cube2222 5y ago

You can write Terraform using JSON if you want to: https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html https://www.terraform.io/docs/language/syntax/json.html Or do you mean something deeper?

thanatos519 5y ago
I mean being able to reliably convert HCL↔JSON.

rad_gruchalski 5y ago

It's a language for a reason, there's a grammar, parser, lexer, ast. What's the problem?

garettmd 5y ago

Have you used it since they introduced HCL2? It supports other data structures much better than it used to. Maps, lists, sets, etc. are much easier to work with.

throwaway894345 5y ago
Still a far cry away from a proper programming language, which is what we need. For example, if you want to loop over some config and generate a resource for each config, but the resources need different providers (e.g., different AWS accounts) then you just can't do it. Further, if you just want a little function, you have to build a fully fledged module. Then there are the crazy namespaces (`var`, `local`, `resource`, `module`, etc).
- clipradiowallet 5y ago
  Yes you can... assuming your config is a map, include a key for "provider", and set it appropriately. EG in your example for multiple AWS accounts, define providers aliased as `aws.account1`, `aws.account2`, and so on. Reference those provider aliases in your map you are iterating through, and set the provider to that value.
  - throwaway894345 5y ago
    I'm 99% sure that will fail with an error because "provider" can't be set dynamically. See this issue, for example: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/24476 https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/24476