How to destroy resources created using terraform in azure devops pipeline by using PowerShell

Question

I have a project where I'm using Terraform in Azure DevOps Pipeline create Infrastructure but want to destroy the infrastructure in a PowerShell script running locally.

So the PScommand that I want to run is this:

$TerraCMD = "terraform destroy -var-file C:/Users/Documents/Terraform/config.json"

Invoke-Expression -Command $TerraCMD

But I get the following output:

[0m[1m[32mNo changes.[0m[1m No objects need to be destroyed.[0m

[0mEither you have not created any objects yet or the existing objects were
already deleted outside of Terraform.
[33mâ•·[0m[0m
[33m│[0m [0m[1m[33mWarning: [0m[0m[1mValue for undeclared variable[0m
[33m│[0m [0m
[33m│[0m [0m[0mThe root module does not declare a variable named "config" but a value was
[33m│[0m [0mfound in file
[33m│[0m [0m"C:/Users/mahera.erum.baloch/source/repos/PCFA-CloudMigration/On-Prem-Env/IaC/Terraform/config.json".
[33m│[0m [0mIf you meant to use this value, add a "variable" block to the
[33m│[0m [0mconfiguration.
[33m│[0m [0m
[33m│[0m [0mTo silence these warnings, use TF_VAR_... environment variables to provide
[33m│[0m [0mcertain "global" settings to all configurations in your organization. To
[33m│[0m [0mreduce the verbosity of these warnings, use the -compact-warnings option.
[33m╵[0m[0m
[0m[1m[32m
Destroy complete! Resources: 0 destroyed.

I know this is probably due to that I created the resources through the pipeline and not from local repository, but is there a way to do this?

Any help would be appreciated.

P.S. The State file is saved in the Azure Storage.

Answer 1

I'm going to assume that your code is kept in a repo that you have access to, since you mentioned that it's being deployed from Terraform running in an Azure DevOps Pipeline.

As others mentioned, the state file AND your terraform code is your source of truth. Hence, you'd need for both the PowerShell script and the Pipeline to be referring to the same state file and code, to achieve what you're trying to.

For the terraform destroy to run, it would need access to both your Terraform code and the state file so that it can compare what needs to be destroyed.

Unless your setup is very different from this, you could have your PowerShell script just git clone or git pull the repo, depending on your requirements, and then execute a terraform destroy on that version of the code. Your state file will then be updated accordingly.