--- title: "Show the current Terraform Workspace in Your Terminal Prompt" url: "https://www.bekk.christmas/post/2023/14/show-the-current-terraform-workspace-in-your-terminal-prompt" authors: ["Andreas Mosti"] published: "2023-12-14" updated: "2024-11-07T13:05:28Z" language: "en-US" type: "article" tags: ["Sky"] --- # Show the current Terraform Workspace in Your Terminal Prompt Managing Terraform configurations efficiently with workspaces is a game-changer for keeping your code DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself). However, when dealing with multiple workspaces, it can be challenging to keep tabs on your current working environment. In this post, we'll explore how to display the active Terraform workspace in your terminal prompt to avoid unintended disasters, such as executing terraform destroy on the wrong setup. ## In short Terraform workspaces let you reuse one configuration across environments while keeping state isolated per workspace. Showing the active workspace in your terminal prompt helps you stay in the right environment and avoid running Terraform commands against the wrong setup. - **For:** Terraform users managing multiple workspaces - **Good to know beforehand:** Basic Terraform workspaces and shell prompt configuration _AI-generated_ ## Terraform Workspaces you say? If you're unfamiliar with them, Terraform workspaces provide a solution for handling multiple environments (e.g., dev, staging, production) within a single Terraform configuration. Before the introduction of workspaces, maintaining separate Terraform configurations for each environment was necessary. This approach was less than ideal due to extensive code duplication, leading to potential errors. With workspaces, a single Terraform configuration suffices, and workspaces help manage the state of each environment independently. Consider this example: a Terraform configuration creating a VPC, a subnet, and an EC2 instance. By running `terraform workspace new staging` and `terraform workspace new production`, you can create distinct workspaces for each environment. Execute `terraform apply` in the desired workspace to deploy the VPC, subnet, and EC2 instance uniquely for that environment, each having its isolated state file. Here's a code snippet exemplifying interaction with Terraform workspaces. Suppose you wish to create an Azure KeyVault, prefixing the name with the workspace designation: ```bash locals { environment = terraform.workspace key_vault_name = { production = "vault-prod" staging = "vault-staging" } } resource "azurerm_key_vault" "this" { name = lookup(local.key_vault_name, local.environment) resource_group_name = var.resource_group_name location = var.location tenant_id = data.azurerm_client_config.current.tenant_id sku_name = "standard" enabled_for_disk_encryption = false soft_delete_retention_days = 7 purge_protection_enabled = false tags = var.tags } ``` Utilizing the `terraform.workspace` variable ensures that the KeyVault name is dynamically selected based on the workspace, enabling code reuse across multiple environments while maintaining strict isolation of each environment's state. For more detailed information on Terraform workspaces, refer to the [official documentation](https://www.terraform.io/docs/state/workspaces.html). ## Displaying the Current Workspace in Your Terminal Prompt Now that we grasp the concept of workspaces, let's explore how to exhibit the active workspace in our terminal prompt. This proves invaluable when navigating multiple workspaces, ensuring you're in the correct one to avoid unintended operations like applying changes to the wrong environment. The greatest fear any developer has is to accidentally run `terraform apply` in the wrong workspace and accidentally destroy production. By showing the current workspace in your terminal prompt, you can be sure that you are working in the correct workspace. For users of `zsh` with `Oh My Zsh`, a popular zsh configuration framework, the built-in terraform plugin offers autocompletion and workspace indication in the prompt. Add the following lines to your configuration file: ```bash plugins=(... terraform) RPROMPT='$(tf_prompt_info)' RPROMPT='$(tf_version_prompt_info)' ``` and if you want to add an prefix or suffix to the prompt: ```bash ZSH_THEME_TF_PROMPT_PREFIX="%{$fg[white]%}" ZSH_THEME_TF_PROMPT_SUFFIX="%{$reset_color%}" ZSH_THEME_TF_VERSION_PROMPT_PREFIX="%{$fg[white]%}" ZSH_THEME_TF_VERSION_PROMPT_SUFFIX="%{$reset_color%}" ``` Full plugin doc can be found [here](https://github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/blob/master/plugins/terraform/README.md). But, if you're an old fart like me and still use Bash, you're in luck. Add the following lines to your .`bashrc` or .`bash_profile` (with your own edits to the `PS1` variable): ``` terraform_prompt() { if [ -d .terraform ]; then workspace="$(command terraform workspace show 2>/dev/null)" if [ -n "$workspace" ]; then echo " ($workspace)" fi fi } export PS1='\u@\h \[\033[32m\]\w\[\033[33m\]$(parse_git_branch)\[\e[1m\]$(terraform_prompt)\[\033[00m\] $ ' ``` This code will result in the following prompt: ```bash ~/Dev/my-terraform-repo/workspace-module (main) (staging) $ ``` Stay safe and happy Terraforming! Oh, and as a bonus - here is the function making the current git branch show up in your prompt, as seen in the `PS1` export above: ```bash parse_git_branch() { git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/' } ```