Configuring Terraform and the provider version to use

The default behavior of Terraform is that, when executing the terraform init command, the version of the Terraform binary (which we will call the Command-Line Interface (CLI), as explained here: https://www.terraform.io/docs/glossary.html#cli) used is the one installed on the local workstation. In addition, this command downloads the latest version of the providers used in the code.

However, for compatibility reasons, it is always advisable to avoid surprises so that you can specify which version of the Terraform binary is going to be used in the Terraform configuration. The following are some examples:

• A Terraform configuration written with HCL 2 must indicate that it has to be executed with a Terraform version greater than or equal to 0.12.
• A Terraform configuration that contains new features such as count and for_each in modules must indicate that it has to be executed with a Terraform version greater than or equal to 0.13.

For more details about the HCL syntax, read the documentation at https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html.

In the same vein and for the same reasons of compatibility, we may want to specify the provider version to be used.

In this recipe, we will learn how to specify the Terraform version, as well as the provider version.