Terraform Module Releaser

^{A GitHub Action for managing Terraform modules in GitHub monorepos, automating versioning, releases, and documentation.}

Simplify the management of Terraform modules in your monorepo with this GitHub Action, designed to automate module-specific versioning and releases. By streamlining the Terraform module release process, this action allows you to manage multiple modules in a single repository while still maintaining independence and flexibility. Additionally, it generates a beautifully crafted wiki for each module, complete with readme information, usage examples, Terraform-docs details, and a full changelog.

Key Features

• Efficient Module Tagging: Module tags are specifically designed to only include the current Terraform module directory (and nothing else), thereby dramatically decreasing the size and improving Terraform performance.
• Automated Release Management: Identifies Terraform modules affected by changes in a pull request and determines the necessary release type (major, minor, or patch) based on commit messages.
• Versioning and Tagging: Calculates the next version tag for each module and commits, tags, and pushes new versions for each module individually.
• Release Notes and Comments: Generates a pull request comment summarizing module changes and release types, and creates a GitHub release for each module with a dynamically generated description.
• Wiki Integration: Updates the wiki with new release information, including:
  • README.md information for each module
  • Beautifully crafted module usage examples
  • terraform-docs details for each module
  • Full changelog for each module
• Deletes Synced: Automatically removes tags from deleted Terraform modules, keeping your repository organized and up-to-date.
• Flexible Configuration: Offers advanced input options for customization, allowing you to tailor the action to your specific needs.

Demo

Check out our Terraform Modules Demo repository for a practical example of how to use this action in a monorepo setup. See real-world usage in action:

• Pull Request - Initial
• Pull Request - Module Changes
• Wiki
• Releases
• More Pull Request Examples

Screenshots

Getting Started

Step 1: Ensure GitHub Wiki is Enabled

Before using this action, make sure that the wiki is enabled and initialized for your repository:

1. Go to your repository's homepage.
2. Navigate to the Settings tab.
3. Under the Features section, ensure the Wikis option is checked to enable the GitHub Wiki.
4. Navigate to the Wiki tab on your repository.
5. Click the Create the first page button and add a basic title like Home to initialize the wiki with an initial commit.
6. Save the changes to ensure your wiki is not empty when the GitHub Action updates it with module information.

Step 2: Configure the Action

Add the following YAML to your .github/workflows directory:

terraform-module-releaser.yml

name: Terraform Module Releaser
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, reopened, synchronize, closed] # Closed required
    branches:
      - main

permissions:
  contents: write # Required for to push tags, create release, and push changes to the wiki
  pull-requests: write # Required to comment on pull request

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Terraform Module Releaser
        uses: techpivot/terraform-module-releaser@v1

This configuration provides an out-of-the-box solution that should work for most projects, as the defaults are reasonably configured.

If you need to customize additional parameters, please refer to Input Parameters section below.

Permissions

Before executing the GitHub Actions workflow, ensure that you have the necessary permissions set for accessing pull requests and creating releases.

• By default, this GitHub Action uses the GITHUB_TOKEN associated with the workflow. To properly comment on pull requests and create tags/releases, the workflow permission for pull-requests must be set to "write".
• Additionally, the workflow permission for contents must also be set to "write" to allow the action to create tags and releases.
• For security considerations and best practices when using the github_token, please refer to the Security Documentation.
• Ensure the Restrict editing to users in teams with push access only setting is enabled for public repositories, as the GitHub Actions Bot can write to the wiki by default.

If the permissions are insufficient, the action may fail with a 403 error, indicating a lack of access to the necessary resources.

Directory Structure Best Practices

• Avoid placing nested Terraform modules within a sub-directory of another module, as this practice can lead to issues with dependency management and module separation. Instead, structure your repository with multiple levels of folders/directories to organize modules while keeping each Terraform module isolated within its dedicated directory. This approach promotes maintainability and helps ensure clarity across modules.

• We recommend structuring modules with a top-level namespace that is related to a major provider (e.g., aws, azure, or null). Within this namespace, use a nested directory to house the actual module with a name that corresponds closely to its intended purpose or resource. For example:

  ├── aws
  │   ├── vpc
  │   └── ec2
  ├── azure
  │   ├── resource-group
  │   └── storage-account
  └── null
      └── label

Input Parameters

While the out-of-the-box defaults are suitable for most use cases, you can further customize the action's behavior by configuring the following optional input parameters as needed.

Input	Description	Default
major-keywords	Keywords in commit messages that indicate a major release	major change,breaking change
minor-keywords	Keywords in commit messages that indicate a minor release	feat,feature
patch-keywords	Keywords in commit messages that indicate a patch release	fix,chore,docs
default-first-tag	Specifies the default tag version	v1.0.0
terraform-docs-version	Specifies the terraform-docs version used to generate documentation for the wiki	v0.19.0
delete-legacy-tags	Specifies a boolean that determines whether tags and releases from Terraform modules that have been deleted should be automatically removed	true
disable-wiki	Whether to disable wiki generation for Terraform modules	false
wiki-sidebar-changelog-max	An integer that specifies how many changelog entries are displayed in the sidebar per module	5
disable-branding	Controls whether a small branding link to the action's repository is added to PR comments. Recommended to leave enabled to support OSS.	false
module-change-exclude-patterns	A comma-separated list of file patterns to exclude from triggering version changes in Terraform modules. Patterns follow glob syntax (e.g., .gitignore,_.md) and are relative to each Terraform module directory. Files matching these patterns will not affect version changes. WARNING: Avoid excluding '_.tf' files, as they are essential for module detection and versioning processes.	.gitignore, *.md, *.tftest.hcl, tests/**
module-asset-exclude-patterns	A comma-separated list of file patterns to exclude when bundling a Terraform module for tag/release. Patterns follow glob syntax (e.g., tests/\*\*) and are relative to each Terraform module directory. Files matching these patterns will be excluded from the bundled output.	.gitignore, *.md, *.tftest.hcl, tests/**

Example Usage with Inputs

name: Terraform Module Releaser
on:
  pull_request:
    types: [opened, reopened, synchronize, closed] # Closed required
    branches:
      - main

permissions:
  contents: write # Required for to push tags, create release, and push changes to the wiki
  pull-requests: write # Required to comment on pull request

jobs:
  release:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v4

      - name: Terraform Module Releaser
        uses: techpivot/terraform-module-releaser@v1
        with:
          major-keywords: major update,breaking change
          minor-keywords: feat,feature
          patch-keywords: fix,chore,docs
          default-first-tag: v1.0.0
          terraform-docs-version: v0.19.0
          delete-legacy-tags: true
          disable-wiki: false
          wiki-sidebar-changelog-max: 10
          module-change-exclude-patterns: .gitignore,*.md,*.tftest.hcl,tests/**
          module-asset-exclude-patterns: .gitignore,*.md,*.tftest.hcl,tests/**

Inspiration

This action was inspired by the blog post GitHub-Powered Terraform Modules Monorepo by Piotr Krukowski.

Notes

• This action uses Conventional Commits to automatically determine the release type (major, minor, or patch) based on commit messages. This behavior is configurable via inputs.
• Versioning is done using Semantic Versioning (SemVer), which provides a clear and consistent way to manage module versions.
• Commit messages are linked to the respective Terraform directories (handling PRs that may have separate modules and changed files).
• Unlike the original inspiration, which relied on labels for tagging and versioning, this action leverages commit messages to determine the release type. This approach simplifies the process and eliminates the complexity introduced by labels, which were PR-specific and didn't account for individual commits per module. By using commit messages, we can now accurately tag and version only the relevant commits, providing a more precise and efficient release management process.
• 100% GitHub-based: This action has no external dependencies, eliminating the need for additional authentication and complexity. Unlike earlier variations that stored built module assets in external services like Amazon S3, this action keeps everything within GitHub, providing a self-contained and streamlined solution for managing Terraform modules.
• Pull Request-based workflow: This action runs on the pull_request event, using pull request comments to track permanent releases tied to commits. This method ensures persistence, unlike Action Artifacts, which expire. As a result, the module does not support non-PR workflows, such as direct pushes to the default branch.

License

The scripts and documentation in this project are released under the MIT License.

Security

For detailed information about security practices and guidelines, check out the Security Documentation.