terragrunt

Automate your workflow by injecting custom scripts. We’ll use before_hook and after_hook to trigger actions like validation, code linting, or Slack notifications directly around your Terraform lifecycle events without wrappers.

Deploy or destroy entire environments with one command. We’ll master terragrunt run-all, learning how to orchestrate parallel execution across dozens of modules while managing the blast radius of potential failures.

Visualizing deployment order is crucial. We’ll look at how Terragrunt builds a directed graph of your modules to determine exactly which resources must be created first, ensuring a crash-free deployment sequence based on your configuration.

Terraform plans fail if a dependency hasn't been applied yet. We’ll use mock_outputs to fake temporary data, allowing you to generate valid plans for an entire stack even when the underlying resources don't exist yet (the "chicken and egg" problem).

Pass data between isolated modules without copy-pasting. We’ll use the dependency block to read outputs from your VPC module and inject them directly into your App module, linking infrastructure dynamically across different state files.

Dynamic configuration requires knowing where you are. We’ll cover essential functions like find_in_parent_folders() and get_terragrunt_dir() that allow your code to automatically detect its location in the directory tree and adjust paths accordingly.

Stop repeating yourself. We will master the include block to cascade settings from root configurations down to leaf modules, and use hidden _env directories to share common configurations across environments like Staging and Production.

Organization is key to scale. We'll implement the industry-standard directory structure—Account, Region, and Environment—ensuring that your file system logically maps to your actual cloud footprint for easy navigation and security boundaries.

Separate your infrastructure code (modules) from your deployment configuration (live). We will explore how to keep your Terraform logic versioned in one repo while using a dedicated "Live" repo to define specific environments and reduce duplication.

Forget maintaining fragile .tfvars files. We’ll use the inputs block to pass variables directly from Terragrunt to your modules, enabling you to define environment-specific values clearly while keeping your underlying Terraform code generic.