Managing Plugins

Terraform relies on plugins called "providers" in order to manage various types of resources. (For more information about providers, see Providers in the Terraform language docs.)

Terraform downloads and/or installs any providers required by a configuration when initializing a working directory. By default, this works without any additional interaction but requires network access to download providers from their source registry.

You can configure Terraform's provider installation behavior to limit or skip network access, and to enable use of providers that aren't available via a networked source. Terraform also includes some commands to show information about providers and to reduce the effort of installing providers in airgapped environments.

Configuring Plugin Installation

Terraform's configuration file includes options for caching downloaded plugins, or explicitly specifying a local or HTTPS mirror to install plugins from. For more information, see CLI Config File.

Getting Plugin Information

Use the terraform providers command to get information about the providers required by the current working directory's configuration.

Use the terraform version command (or terraform -version) to show the specific provider versions installed for the current working directory.

Use the terraform providers schema command to get machine-readable information about the resources and configuration options offered by each provider.

Managing Plugin Installation

Use the terraform providers mirror command to download local copies of every provider required by the current working directory's configuration. This directory will use the nested directory layout that Terraform expects when installing plugins from a local source, so you can transfer it directly to an airgapped system that runs Terraform.

Use the terraform providers lock command to update the lock file that Terraform uses to ensure predictable runs when using ambiguous provider version constraints.