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Terraform module registry (FREE)

Introduced in GitLab 14.0.

Publish Terraform modules in your project's Infrastructure Registry, then reference them using GitLab as a Terraform module registry.

Authenticate to the Terraform module registry

To authenticate to the Terraform module registry, you need either:

Publish a Terraform Module

When you publish a Terraform Module, if it does not exist, it is created.

Prerequisites:

  • A package with the same name and version must not already exist.
  • Your project and group names must not include a dot (.). For example, source = "gitlab.example.com/my.group/project.name".
  • You must authenticate with the API. If authenticating with a deploy token, it must be configured with the write_package_registry scope.
PUT /projects/:id/packages/terraform/modules/:module-name/:module-system/:module-version/file
Attribute Type Required Description
id integer/string yes The ID or URL-encoded path of the project.
module-name string yes The package name. Supported syntax: One to 64 ASCII characters, including lowercase letters (a-z), digits (0-9), and hyphens (-).
module-system string yes The package system. Supported syntax: One to 64 ASCII characters, including lowercase letters (a-z), digits (0-9), and hyphens (-). More information can be found in the Terraform Module Registry Protocol documentation.
module-version string yes The package version. It must be valid according to the Semantic Versioning Specification.

Provide the file content in the request body.

As the following example shows, requests must end with /file. If you send a request ending with something else, it results in a 404 error {"error":"404 Not Found"}.

Example request using a personal access token:

curl --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     --upload-file path/to/file.tgz \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_project_id>/packages/terraform/modules/my-module/my-system/0.0.1/file"

Example response:

{
  "message":"201 Created"
}

Example request using a deploy token:

curl --header "DEPLOY-TOKEN: <deploy_token>" \
     --upload-file path/to/file.tgz \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_project_id>/packages/terraform/modules/my-module/my-system/0.0.1/file"

Example response:

{
  "message":"201 Created"
}

Reference a Terraform Module

Prerequisites:

  • You need to authenticate with the API. If authenticating with a personal access token, it must be configured with the read_api scope.

Authentication tokens (Job Token or Personal Access Token) can be provided for terraform in your ~/.terraformrc file:

credentials "gitlab.com" {
  token = "<TOKEN>"
}

Where gitlab.com can be replaced with the hostname of your self-managed GitLab instance.

You can then refer to your Terraform Module from a downstream Terraform project:

module "<module>" {
  source = "gitlab.com/<namespace>/<module-name>/<module-system>"
}

Where <namespace> is the namespace of the Terraform module registry.

Publish a Terraform module by using CI/CD

To work with Terraform modules in GitLab CI/CD, you can use CI_JOB_TOKEN in place of the personal access token in your commands.

For example, this job uploads a new module for the local system provider and uses the module version from the Git commit tag:

stages:
  - upload

upload:
  stage: upload
  image: curlimages/curl:latest
  variables:
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_DIR: ${CI_PROJECT_DIR} # The path to your Terraform module
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME: ${CI_PROJECT_NAME} # The name of your Terraform module
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM: local # The system or provider your Terraform module targets (ex. local, aws, google)
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION: ${CI_COMMIT_TAG} # Tag commits with SemVer for the version of your Terraform module to be published
  script:
    - TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME=$(echo "${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}" | tr " _" -) # module-name must not have spaces or underscores, so translate them to hyphens
    - tar -vczf ${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}.tgz -C ${TERRAFORM_MODULE_DIR} --exclude=./.git .
    - 'curl --location --header "JOB-TOKEN: ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}" 
         --upload-file ${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}.tgz
         ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/terraform/modules/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}/file'
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG

To trigger this upload job, add a Git tag to your commit. Ensure the tag follows the Semantic Versioning Specification that Terraform requires. The rules:if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG ensures that only tagged commits to your repo trigger the module upload job. For other ways to control jobs in your CI/CD pipeline, refer to the .gitlab-ci.yml keyword reference.

Example projects

For examples of the Terraform module registry, check the projects below: