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¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

terraform: update outputs only

• 122 words • 1 min • updated

Problem statement: Given a Terraform project full of pending changes (terraform plan), update its outputs only.

I would expect to be able to use -target to do so, but that’s not possible. This flag is intended for resources only.

The correct approach is terraform apply -refresh-only:

Running terraform apply -refresh-only should take care of any new outputs. It will read the latest data from each resource and then update all of the outputs in terms of those updates, which includes re-evaluating your output expressions to incorporate any changes.

I tested this and it indeed works as expected.

The next action from here would be to run terraform apply for select -target resources, a few at a time, until drift is completely eliminated.