imperative

Imperative Terraform

Imperative Terraform exposes Terraform provider resource CRUD and data source Read operations over a local Unix socket so other tools (e.g., Ansible) can call provider logic without running Terraform itself.

This module is strictly a Go library -- it needs to be embedded in a build of a Terraform provider and triggered at startup via a command-line flag or environment variable.

Status

Work in progress. Data source reads are wired up, but interactive message handling and resource CRUD are not complete yet. See DESIGN.md and IMPLEMENTATION_NOTES.md for details.

How It Works (High-Level)

• A bootstrap client starts the provider in server mode and sends configuration via stdin.
• The server announces its Unix socket path via stdout.
• Clients connect to the socket, authenticate (optional HMAC), and send JSON messages.
• The server dispatches requests to provider data sources/resources.

Protocol

Messages use a JSON envelope:

{
  "type": "message_type",
  "protocol_version": 1,
  "payload": {}
}

See DESIGN.md for full message types and lifecycle.

Repository Layout

• server/ — Core server, connection handling, provider wiring.
• message/ — Message envelopes and payload types.
• shutdown/ — Graceful shutdown controller.
• internal/ — Small shared utilities.

Next Steps

• Complete data source responses and resource CRUD handlers.
• Implement client (e.g., Ansible collection) to manage bootstrap/discovery.
• Add unit and integration tests.