Question

A new engineer clones your Terraform repository containing several .tf files that reference the AWS provider. They immediately run 'terraform plan' and receive an error stating the provider is not installed and that they must run another command first. Which command must they run before 'terraform plan' will succeed, and why?

Accepted Answer

Run 'terraform init' to download the required provider plugins and prepare the working directory.

Answer

Run 'terraform apply' first, because apply installs providers automatically and plan does not.

Answer

Run 'terraform validate' to install the providers referenced in the configuration files.

Answer

Run 'terraform refresh' to sync state and pull down the provider binaries from the registry.