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by lobster_johnson 3300 days ago
I've wanted, and tried and failed, to adopt Terraform several times now. What always gets in my way is that we already have all our infrastructure in place, and Terraform's import capabilities are too limited.

For example, the last time I used it, a few months ago, it was not able to import almost any of our Google Cloud stuff, and I discovered that import support is only provided for some resources. There's a third-party tool called Terraforming, but it apparently only works with AWS.

I'm quite disheartened that the world is lagging this far behind. The only competitor I've found is Salt, and I found its orchestration support to be a bit of a mess. And just as with Terraform, the code is constantly lagging behind the providers.

The one provider I'd have expected to be on the forefront of orchestration is Google, and in a different multiverse their engineers are swarming around Terraform to make sure it has top-notch, official, first-class support, but alas, not in this one.

Are there any competitors that provide a smoother experience?
1 comments
danawillow 3300 days ago
Hey there- Dana from Google here, I lead the efforts around Terraform from our side. You'll be happy to know that in the last 2 months alone we've added import for:

  - google_bigquery_dataset
  - google_bigquery_table
  - google_compute_address
  - google_compute_disk
  - google_compute_global_address
  - google_compute_route
  - google_compute_network
  - google_dns_managed_zone
  - google_sql_user
  - google_storage_bucket
, with more to come shortly!

We only have one open issue around import, so if there are other resources you'd like to see imported feel free to file an issue: https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-go... (just moved to a new repo a few days ago, and we're still in the process of getting existing issues moved over). A big factor in our prioritization of what to work on is based around issues filed (and thumbs ups on those issues), so that's a great way to get in touch with the team.

If you have any other questions around the Terraform+GCP experience, feel free to ask us in the #terraform channel in the GCP slack (https://gcp-slack.appspot.com/ if you aren't already there). Best of luck, and do reach out if you need anything!

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lobster_johnson 3298 days ago
Thanks! I'll take yet another look at Terraform, then. Fourth time the charm, or something.

My lasting fear is that even if it has 90% of the support, there will always be one thing, or one edge case or bug, that will become an annoying blocker. Using a tool like TF means becoming dependent on it to a large extent.

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