chdir doesn't respect .tflint.hcl from the called directory

[amaxine]

Summary

Prior to the deprecation of accepting path arguments, we relied on keeping a single .tflint.hcl in the root of our Terraform configuration monorepo that got enforced across all configurations. With chdir, this is no longer the case. This is a problem for us, as the default rule set warns on certain behaviour we don't want - for example we enforce provider versions in modules only.

We would like to continue to have a singular configuration for a monorepo, which was possible prior to this change.

Command

tflint --chdir=some/dir

Terraform Configuration

terraform {
  required_providers {
    datadog = {
      source = "DataDog/datadog"
    }
  }
}

TFLint Configuration

plugin "aws" {
  enabled = true
  version = "0.23.1"
  source  = "github.com/terraform-linters/tflint-ruleset-aws"
}

rule "terraform_unused_required_providers" {
  enabled = true
}

rule "terraform_naming_convention" {
  enabled = true
}

rule "terraform_required_providers" {
  enabled = false
}

rule "terraform_required_version" {
  enabled = false
}

Output

N/A

TFLint Version

0.47.0

Terraform Version

1.5.2

Operating System

• Linux
• macOS
• Windows

[amaxine]

I'm not sure why this was converted to a discussion, I'd consider this a regression compared to pre 0.44 releases of tflint. chdir as it stands isn't a 1 to 1 replacement of previous functionality.

[bendrucker]

See https://github.com/terraform-linters/tflint/blob/master/docs/user-guide/working-directory.md, this is still possible.

We made the decision that chdir should happen before anything meaningful, including loading configuration, and should be functionally equivalent to cd $dir && tflint in a shell. Terraform does the same. It is not a regression/bug.

[amaxine]

I think release notes should have clarified that. The recommendation to migrate to using chdir does not make it clear that the behaviour is different. Anyway, thanks for the pointer.

[bendrucker]

You also can use git rev-parse --show-toplevel from a Git repo depending on the desired behavior. You can always easily construct an absolute path to your config that TFLint will not attempt to resolve.

If configuration paths were resolved relative to the original working directory, it would be impossible to implement the reverse and read the configuration from each recursed directory. It may not be the most convenient for you personally, but that's what makes it the clear best choice.

[bendrucker]

In most cases the directory argument can be replaced with --chdir

Obviously this could be clearer about exactly which cases it's not 1:1, but there's a dedicated documentation page and this is a volunteer project. Sometimes you have to read the docs, that doesn't seem unreasonable here.