Upgrade terraform to specific version

Question

Use case

I have installed Terraform v0.11.13 via homebrew and as recommended by terraform I want to ugprade to version v0.11.14 before doing the major upgrade to v0.12.0.

The problem

When I run brew upgrade terraform or download the Mac package from the terraform website it would immediately update my terraform version to v0.12.0 I think.

So how can I upgrade to v0.11.14 instead?

Answer 1

Try to use tenv for that, the command is similar:

tenv tf install 0.11.14
tenv tf use 0.11.14

tenv works in a more predictable way

Answer 2

Your version is quite old now but here is my suggestion:

1. Uninstall the current Terraform version (if installed): If you already have Terraform v0.11.13 installed via Homebrew, first uninstall it to avoid conflicts:

brew uninstall terraform

2. Use Terraform's official binaries to install v0.11.14: Homebrew does not maintain older versions directly, so you can manually download and install the required version.

3. Download binary

curl -O https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.11.14/terraform_0.11.14_darwin_amd64.zip

4. Extract and move

unzip terraform_0.11.14_darwin_amd64.zip
sudo mv terraform /usr/local/bin/terraform

5 Verify the installation:

terraform -v

---

Above is for direct installation method You can follow tfenv approach to get multiple version in use.

Here is quick commands

#Download tfenv for Mac
brew install tfenv

#Download required version
tfenv install 0.11.14

#Set default version
tfenv use 0.11.14

#Optional you can set version globally as well
tfenv use 1.0.11 --global

---

Answer 3

#Terraform installation through downloaded binary with respect to a specific version

There are cases when your organisation is using a particular terraform version & you know that current terraform version is way latest than the one in your organisation is using and you are tasked to use the same without the latest version. so that you can use below steps to update the binary versions as in when needed under /usr/bin

    wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.6.5/terraform_1.6.5_linux_amd64.zip
    wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/1.6.5/terraform_1.6.5_SHA256SUMS
    SHA256SUM terraform_1.6.5_linux_amd64.zip
    mv terraform_1.6.5_linux_amd64.zip terraform.zip
    unzip terraform.zip
    sudo mv terraform /usr/bin
    terraform version

Just in case a video based handson reference is needed - #https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vBJNjv9h8I

Answer 4

I can recommend checking out tenv.

tenv allows you to manage not only Terraform versions, but also OpenTofu and Terragrunt - one simple tool for all three binaries.

Answer 5

Especially when playing around with Terraform 0.12 betas, I learned to love tfenv.

After installation (via brew install tfenv on MacOS), this allows you to easily discover, install and activate any Terraform version:

$ tfenv list-remote
0.12.0
0.12.0-rc1
0.12.0-beta2
0.12.0-beta1
0.12.0
0.11.14
...

$ tfenv install 0.11.14
[INFO] Installing Terraform v0.11.14
[INFO] Downloading release tarball from https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.11.14/terraform_0.11.14_darwin_amd64.zip
...
[INFO] Installation of terraform v0.11.14 successful
[INFO] Switching to v0.11.14
[INFO] Switching completed

If you want to manually switch to a different version:

$ tfenv use 0.12.0
[INFO] Switching to v0.12.0
[INFO] Switching completed

Alternatively, adding .terraform-version file makes tfenv automatically switch to the right version for a given directory and it will even take care of auto-installing the correct version if not already installed.

Answer 6

My two cents

There's a tool that works pretty much like tfenv but it also handles many other software

mise-en-place: https://mise.jdx.dev

You can manage versions for terraform terragrunt go java node python ruby .net awscli postgres redis mongodb etc etc via plugins

Full list of plugins: https://github.com/mise-plugins/registry/blob/main/README.md

Hope you like it

Answer 7

below command will show all the available versions of terraform

sudo apt policy terraform

Install the desired version:

sudo apt-get install terraform=1.4.4-1

If you have a old version already, then uninstall it and run above commands

sudo apt remove terraform

Answer 8

I realised that I was using remote execution with terraform cloud instead of local execution, Thus, even though I upgraded my local terraform to 1.3.7, my remote version remain 1.1.7 therefore I had update the remote version by simply selecting the appropriate version from my workspace settings and everything works.

Answer 9

just use tfenv or tfswitch both tools are really good. good point is that if you have version requirements in terraform files when you do tfswitch it will automatically download and install version which you need.

https://tfswitch.warrensbox.com/

Answer 10

Easy and best way to do:-

# MacOS
 brew install warrensbox/tap/tfswitch

# Linux
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/warrensbox/terraform- 
switcher/release/install.sh | bash

then use Either one of command to change version-

1. tfswitch ==> you will see option to select version.


2. tfswitch 0.14.3 ==> this way

Answer 11

There is a nice alternative to tfenv that I've been using for few years now - tfswitch.

1. Simple installation process with:

# MacOS
brew install warrensbox/tap/tfswitch

# Linux
curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/warrensbox/terraform-switcher/release/install.sh | bash

2. Supplies alpha, beta and release candidates terraform versions.
3. Supports multiple options for changing versions like:

• Manual with tfswitch VERSION_NUMBER.
• Automatically detects and switch to version described in version.tf file.
• Automatically switch to custom binaries under custom path (helpful for users or services with limited privileges).
• Automatically switch with .tfswitchrc, .terrafom-version - requires minimum setup and supports bash, zsh and fish.

4. Can be easily integrated with Jenkins and CircleCI - I haven't tested it out, these features were added 10 and 5 months ago respectively.

All in all it's a great and simple helper, would recommend this one.

Answer 12

I have used TF since 0.6 and actively use many different versions on my workstation. I do this with direnv [https://direnv.net/] since that was available for quite a while, and it works well for managing the TF binary version within a dir, plus it allows me to pass env vars per dir into TF with little hassle.

Sample .envrc:

export AWS_PROFILE=prod
export PATH=/usr/local/terraform/terraform-0.12.20:$PATH

export TF_VAR_dd_api_key=REDACTED
export TF_VAR_dd_app_key=REDACTED

When I cd into the dir containing this .envrc, not only does it put the correct TF binary in my PATH, it also sets my AWS profile and in this case some DataDog API keys.

When I want to upgrade TF, I ensure I have the desired binary placed into the correct location and edit the .envrc so it is in PATH. Ideally, the .envrc is not pushed to Github since other people could have different setups, and especially API keys should not go into the repo.

I know it's a little old fashioned but it works great for me.

Answer 13

Apart from the conventional solutions, an easy implementation to the required problem would be installing tfswitch. It can change terraform versions with only one command. Installation and usage guide is provided in the given link.

Note: You can not downgrade to previous versions after the script has been initialised (terraform init).

Answer 14

For anyone looking to do the same without using homebrew:

1. Get source

$ wget https://releases.hashicorp.com/terraform/0.11.14/terraform_0.11.14_linux_amd64.zip

$ unzip terraform_0.11.14_linux_amd64.zip

2. Give binary executable permissions and install (will overwrite current version)

$ chmod +x terraform

$ sudo mv terraform /usr/local/bin/

3. Confirm version

$ terraform --version

Source: https://titosoft.github.io/kvm/terraform-and-kvm/#installing-terraform