Update from beta to general availability

The GA release of Stacks introduces several new features and improvements.

Terraform CLI changes

During the Stacks beta, you could initialize your Stack using the terraform-stacks-cli. The separate terraform-stacks-cli is now deprecated. To provide a more unified experience, all Stacks commands are now in the main Terraform CLI as a new subcommand: terraform stacks. You can now manage all of your Terraform Stack operations from a single tool, streamlining your workflow. To learn more, refer to the terraform stacks CLI commands.

Language changes

The general availability release of Stacks introduced a few backward-incompatible syntax changes to the Stacks language:

• Syntax change for deployment groups and auto-approval:
  • The auto_approve, orchestrate, and replan blocks for orchestration rule are now deprecated.
  • The auto_approve block is replaced by a new auto_approve_checks argument on the deployment_group block. The new deployment_group syntax lets you define auto-approval rules directly within your custom deployment groups, giving you more granular control. Learn more about defining conditions for your deployment runs.
• Stacks no longer support the <NAME>.tfstack.hcl file extension.
  • The new extension for configuring your Stack components is <NAME>.tfcomponent.hcl. The file name change better reflects the mental model of a component-based configuration.

Billing changes

The Stacks public beta did not count toward your HCP Terraform organization's Resources Under Management (RUM). With the GA release, Stacks RUM is aggregated with your workspace RUM for billing purposes.

Billing dashboard

The HCP Terraform usage page has been updated to reflect the new billing metrics, including:

• Billable Managed Resources displays the sum of your total Stacks and total workspace RUM.
• Total Applies displays the sum of your total Stacks and workspace applies.
• Applies this month displays the Stacks and workspace applies this month.
• Billable Stack Resources displays the sum of your total Stacks RUM.

For more information on billing, refer to the HCP Terraform pricing page.

UI changes

You can no longer destroy Stack deployments and their resources from the HCP Terraform UI. To destroy a Stack deployment, add the destroy argument to a deployment block, then trigger a new deployment run.

To learn more about destroying Stacks and their deployments, refer to Destroy a Stack.

Steps for migration

If you used Stacks during the public beta, you need to take a few steps to transition your existing configurations to the GA release.

Update your configuration files

Perform the following updates to your Stack configuration files to use the new tfcomponent.hcl file extension and the new syntax for deployment groups and auto-approval rules:

1. Rename all of your <NAME>.tfstack.hcl files to <NAME>.tfcomponent.hcl. For example you could run the following command to rename your file:

$ mv my_stack.tfstack.hcl my_stack.tfcomponent.hcl

1. Update your configuration files to use the new deployment_group syntax for auto-approval. For example, the following code snippet uses the deprecated orchestrate block:

orchestrate "auto_approve" "no_destroy" {
  check {
    condition = context.plan.changes.remove == 0
    reason    = "Plan destroys ${context.plan.changes.remove} resources."
  }
}

You can rewrite your auto-approval rules using the deployment_auto_approve block to define your rules, then attaching those rules to deployment groups using the auto_approve_checks argument. The following example rewrites the auto_approve rule using deployment groups:

deployment "my_deployment" {
  inputs = {
    # ...
  }
  deployment_group = deployment_group.my_custom_group
}

deployment_group "my_custom_group" {
  auto_approve_checks = [
    deployment_auto_approve.no_destroy
  ]
}

deployment_auto_approve "no_destroy" {
  check {
    condition = context.plan.changes.remove == 0
    reason    = "Plan destroys ${context.plan.changes.remove} resources."
  }
}

For more information about deployment groups and auto-approval rules, refer to Defining conditions for your deployment runs.

Fetch your configuration

Trigger a new configuration fetch for each of your Stacks. The fetching process pulls your configuration from your Version Control System (VCS) and reinitializes your Stack. You can do this by using the terraform stacks configuration fetch command in the new CLI, or by triggering a deployment run in the HCP Terraform UI.