Terraform/OpenTofu via Pull Request

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Terraform/OpenTofu via Pull Request (TF-via-PR)

What does it do?	Who is it for?
Plan and apply changes with CLI arguments and encrypted plan file to avoid configuration drift. Outline diff changes within updated PR comment and matrix-friendly workflow summary, complete with log.	DevOps and Platform engineers wanting to empower their teams to self-service scalably. Maintainers looking to secure their pipeline without the overhead of containers or VMs.

Usage Examples · In/Output Parameters · Security · Changelog · License

Usage

How to get started quickly?

on:
  pull_request:
  push:
    branches: [main]

jobs:
  provision:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    permissions:
      actions: read        # Required to identify workflow run.
      checks: write        # Required to add status summary.
      contents: read       # Required to checkout repository.
      pull-requests: write # Required to add comment and label.

    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@4
      - uses: hashicorp/setup-terraform@v3
      - uses: devsectop/tf-via-pr@v12
        with:
          # Only plan by default, or apply with lock on merge.
          command: ${{ github.event_name == 'push' && 'apply' || 'plan' }}
          arg-lock: ${{ github.event_name == 'push' }}
          arg-var-file: env/dev.tfvars
          arg-workspace: dev-use1
          working-directory: path/to/directory
          plan-encrypt: ${{ secrets.PASSPHRASE }}

Tip

Pin your workflow version to a specific release tag or SHA to harden your CI/CD pipeline security against supply chain attacks.
Environment variables can be passed in for cloud platform authentication (e.g., configure-aws-credentials for short-lived credentials).

Where to find more examples?

The following workflows showcase common use cases, while a comprehensive list of inputs is documented below.

Run on `pull_request` (plan) and `push` (apply) events with Terraform, AWS authentication and caching.	Run on `pull_request` (plan) and `merge_group` (apply) events with OpenTofu in matrix strategy.
Run on `pull_request` (plan or apply) event with Terraform and OpenTofu on self-hosted runner.	Run on `schedule` (cron) event with fmt/validate checks to open an issue on configuration drift.

How does encryption work?

Before the workflow uploads the plan file as an artifact, it can be encrypted with a passphrase to prevent exposure of sensitive data using plan-encrypt input with a secret (e.g., ${{ secrets.PASSPHRASE }}). This is done with OpenSSL's symmetric stream counter mode encryption with salt and pbkdf2.

In order to decrypt the plan file locally, use the following commands after downloading the artifact (noting the whitespace before openssl to prevent recording the command in shell history):

unzip <tf.plan>
 openssl enc -aes-256-ctr -pbkdf2 -salt -in <tf.plan> -out tf.plan.decrypted -pass pass:"<passphrase>" -d
<tf.tool> show tf.plan.decrypted

For each workflow run, a matrix-friendly job summary with logs is added as a fallback to the PR comment. Below this, you’ll find a list of plan file artifacts generated during runtime.

Parameters

Inputs - Configuration

Type	Name	Description
CLI	`command`	Command to run between: `plan`, `apply` or leave empty for `init` with checks. Example: `plan`
CLI	`working-directory`	Specify the working directory of TF code, alias of `arg-chdir`. Example: `path/to/directory`
CLI	`tool`	Provisioning tool to use between: `terraform` or `tofu`. Default: `terraform`
Check	`format`	Check format of TF code. Default: `false`
Check	`validate`	Check validation of TF code. Default: `false`
Check	`plan-parity`	Replace the plan file if it matches a newly-generated one to prevent stale apply (very rarely needed nowadays). Default: `false`
Security	`plan-encrypt`	Encrypt plan file artifact with the given input. Example: `${{ secrets.PASSPHRASE }}`
Security	`token`	Specify a GitHub token. Default: `${{ github.token }}`
UI	`comment-pr`	PR comment by: `update` existing comment, `recreate` and delete previous one, or `none`. Default: `update`
UI	`label-pr`	Add a PR label with the command input. Default: `true`
UI	`hide-args`	Hide comma-separated list of CLI arguments from the command input. Default: `detailed-exitcode,lock,out,var`

The default behavior of comment-pr is to update the existing PR comment with the latest plan output, making it easy to track changes over time through the comment's revision history.

Inputs - Arguments

Note

Arguments are passed to the appropriate TF command(s) automatically, whether that's init, workspace, validate, plan, or apply.
For repeated arguments like arg-var, arg-replace and arg-target, use commas to separate multiple values (e.g., arg-var: key1=value1,key2=value2).

Toggle view of all available CLI arguments.

Name	CLI Argument
`arg-auto-approve`	`-auto-approve`
`arg-backend-config`	`-backend-config`
`arg-backend`	`-backend`
`arg-backup`	`-backup`
`arg-chdir`	`-chdir`
`arg-check`	`-check` Default: `true`
`arg-compact-warnings`	`-compact-warnings`
`arg-concise`	`-concise`
`arg-destroy`	`-destroy`
`arg-detailed-exitcode`	`-detailed-exitcode` Default: `true`
`arg-diff`	`-diff` Default: `true`
`arg-force-copy`	`-force-copy`
`arg-from-module`	`-from-module`
`arg-generate-config-out`	`-generate-config-out`
`arg-get`	`-get`
`arg-list`	`-list`
`arg-lock-timeout`	`-lock-timeout`
`arg-lock`	`-lock`
`arg-lockfile`	`-lockfile`
`arg-migrate-state`	`-migrate-state`
`arg-no-tests`	`-no-tests`
`arg-or-create`	`-or-create` Default: `true`
`arg-parallelism`	`-parallelism`
`arg-plugin-dir`	`-plugin-dir`
`arg-reconfigure`	`-reconfigure`
`arg-recursive`	`-recursive` Default: `true`
`arg-refresh-only`	`-refresh-only`
`arg-refresh`	`-refresh`
`arg-replace`	`-replace`
`arg-state-out`	`-state-out`
`arg-state`	`-state`
`arg-target`	`-target`
`arg-test-directory`	`-test-directory`
`arg-upgrade`	`-upgrade`
`arg-var-file`	`-var-file`
`arg-var`	`-var`
`arg-workspace`	`-workspace`
`arg-write`	`-write`

Outputs

Type	Name	Description
Artifact	`plan-id`	ID of the plan file artifact.
Artifact	`plan-url`	URL of the plan file artifact.
CLI	`command`	Input of the last TF command.
CLI	`diff`	Diff of changes, if present (truncated).
CLI	`exitcode`	Exit code of the last TF command.
CLI	`result`	Result of the last TF command (truncated).
CLI	`summary`	Summary of the last TF command.
Workflow	`check-id`	ID of the check run.
Workflow	`comment-id`	ID of the PR comment.
Workflow	`job-id`	ID of the workflow job.
Workflow	`run-url`	URL of the workflow run.
Workflow	`identifier`	Unique name of the workflow run and artifact.

Security

View security policy and reporting instructions.

Changelog

View all notable changes to this project in Keep a Changelog format, which adheres to Semantic Versioning.

Tip

All forms of contribution are very welcome and deeply appreciated for fostering open-source projects.

Create a PR to contribute changes you'd like to see.
Raise an issue to propose changes or report unexpected behavior.
Open a discussion to discuss broader topics or questions.
Become a stargazer if you find this project useful.

To-Do

Handling of inputs which contain space(s) (e.g., working-directory: path to/directory).
Handling of comma-separated inputs which contain comma(s) (e.g., arg-var: token=1,2,3)—use TF_CLI_ARGS workaround.

License

This project is licensed under the permissive Apache License 2.0.
All works herein are my own, shared of my own volition, and contributors.

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Terraform/OpenTofu via Pull Request