[verve_rat]

Querying the cloud provider apis for current state? Go to the actual source of truth?

I'm sure there are complications i don't care to see here, but why is "this is what is actually deployed" not the default case?

[Aeolun]

Querying cloud provider API’s takes a while. It can be done, but the results are cached afterwards, which is the state file.

Refreshing the state file (and reconciling differences) also uses the cloud provider API’s. I don’t think we’re going to get better than that.

Unless someone makes a common standard for resource reporting that all cloud providers implement.

[yencabulator]

The state file is more than a cache. If it was just a cache, it wouldn't be problematic.

[notnmeyer]

exactly. relying purely on the provider’s api seems like an untenable solution with the current state of things.

[notnmeyer]

you’d be subject to rate limits and all manner of potential issues and outages if you only query the providers api.

that’s part of the case for a centralized state, to have an additional place that describes what should exist and what it looks like.