Firstly, I want to say this is a really great resource. However, I had a few issues getting started so I'm feeding them back to you.

Problem: Doesn't work with ruby 2.5.0, but doesn't fail (it installs 0.3.0 of kitchen-terraform which is way old)
Solution: Use ruby < 2.5.0, eg. 2.4.3. I used rbenv to use 2.4.3 locally

Problem: The kitchen.yml example is not valid. It fails with:

>>>>>> Message: Kitchen::Driver::Terraform configuration: variables {:value=>["must be a hash which includes only symbol keys and string values"]}

Solution: Wrap the erb lines in quotes, eg.:

  variables:
    access_key: "<%= ENV['AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID'] %>"
    secret_key: "<%= ENV['AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY'] %>"

Alternatively, remove both access_key and secret_key entirely. If they are not specified, the aws provider reads them from ~/.aws.credentials directly.

Problem: terraform init is executed against the wrong dir:

$$$$$$ Running command `terraform init -input=false -lock=true -lock-timeout=0s  -upgrade -force-copy -backend=true  -get=true -get-plugins=true  -verify-plugins=true /Users/robin/code/awspec-kitchen-terraform-2

Solution: Wrong parameter in .kitchen.yml. Change directory to root_module_directory:

driver:
  name: terraform
  root_module_directory: tf

Remove terraform.tfstate.d and .terraform, and re-try

Problem: Error: Required variable not set: region
Solution: Set region on the command line

TF_VAR_region=us-west-1 bundle exec kitchen verify

Alternatively, remove region variable and use AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variable on the command line:

AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-1 bundle exec kitchen verify

Problem: I need to switch to a specific IAM profile when running AWS commands.
Solution: Specify this on the command line:

AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-1 AWS_PROFILE=engineering bundle exec kitchen verify

The tests now function, and I can start working through the exercises.

I've updated my fork of this repo with my changes: https://github.com/yo61/awspec-kitchen-terraform

Hope this is useful to you!

Thanks again for the tutorial.

Hi! Thanks so much for this, I found it very useful. I had a couple of quick questions for you:

• Do you set up and teardown the environment each time, or do you leave your environment running?
• I'm new to Test Kitchen and I don't understand it very well. It appears to be a generalized tool for setting up, testing, and destroying infrastructure, but it seems like these features are all also available in Terraform. Does it offer anything I'm missing?
• In my own setup, my tests are working pretty well, but they also seem a little brittle--if the test needs the ID or IP address of the thing being tested (like a nat_gateway or an eip) I need to create the thing first, then get the IP/IP and add it to the test, then run the test. Any way around this? Is there a way to read the input vars, or query the resources, so I don't have to hardcode things into the tests?

Thanks again for the slideshow and any advice you can offer.