terraform init creating a new workspace in automation

Question

I have looked on the Internets but did not find anything close to an answer. I have the following main.tf :

terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "my-organization"

    workspaces {
      tags = ["app:myapplication"]
      
    }
  }
}

I am using terraform cloud and I would like to use workspace in automation. In order to so, i need first to do a terraform init :

/my/path # terraform init

Initializing Terraform Cloud...

No workspaces found.

There are no workspaces with the configured tags (app:myapplication) in your Terraform Cloud organization. To finish initializing, Terraform needs at least one workspace available.

Terraform can create a properly tagged workspace for you now. Please enter a name to create a new Terraform Cloud workspace.

Enter a value:

I would like to do something of the kind :

terraform init -workspace=my-workspace

so that it is created if it does not exist. But I do not find anything. The only way to create a the first workspace is manually.

How to do that in automation with ci/cd?

[edit] terraform workspace commands are not available before init

/src/terraform # terraform workspace list

Error: Terraform Cloud initialization required: please run "terraform init"

Reason: Initial configuration of Terraform Cloud.

Changes to the Terraform Cloud configuration block require reinitialization, to discover any changes to the available workspaces.

To re-initialize, run: terraform init

Terraform has not yet made changes to your existing configuration or state.

Answer 1

You would need to use the TF Cloud/TFE API. You are using TF Cloud, but can modify the endpoint to target your installation to use TFE.

You first need to list the TF Cloud Workspaces:

curl \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
  https://app.terraform.io/api/v2/organizations/my-organization/workspaces

where my-organization is your TF Cloud organization. This will return the workspaces in a JSON format. You would then need to parse the JSON and iterate over the maps/hashes/dictionaries of existing TF Cloud workspaces. For each iteration, inside the data and then the name key would be the nested value for the name of the workspace. You would gather the names of the workspaces and check that against the name of the workspace you want to exist. If the desired workspace does not exist in the list of workspaces, then you create the TF Cloud workspace:

curl \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" \
  --header "Content-Type: application/vnd.api+json" \
  --request POST \
  --data @payload.json \
  https://app.terraform.io/api/v2/organizations/my-organization/workspaces

again substituting with your organization and your specific payload. You can then terraform init successfully with the backend specifying the Tf Cloud workspace.

Note that if you are executing this in automation as you specify in the question, then the build agent needs connectivity to TF Cloud.

Answer 2

I will not mark this as the answer, but I finally did this, which look like a bad trick to me :

export TF_WORKSPACE=myWorkspace
if terraform init -input=false; then echo "already exist"; else (sleep2; echo $TF_WORKSPACE) | terraform init; fi

terraform apply -auto-approve -var myvar=boo