Installation instructions are unclear and broken

[danielporto]

The installation instructions are unclear,
for the sake of simplicity, please let people know that it suffices to copy the binary (in releases) to
the .terraform/plugins/*/ where * is the system where terraform is installed.

Moreover, the name of the release doesn't match the terraform naming standards for plugins.
instead of terraform-provider-ansible-v0.0.1
must be terraform-provider-ansible_v0.0.1
terraform recognize the name of the module after the "terraform-provider-" and delimits it with "_".
Without it, the module cannot be found and terraform command fails.

I'm starting with Terraform and spent quite some time figuring it out.
Thanks for the great work.

[nbering]

Apologies for the issue. I closed issue #2 because I've updated the build script, but haven't produced updated release archives, yet.

[nbering]

I'm working on a CI pipeline to do that part for me. Should have a new release this weekend, but no promises as yet.

[nbering]

The broken-ness should be fixed in v0.0.2.

Is there anything you think I can do with the documentation to help smooth the installation process?

[danielporto]

I'm trying to make it work with google cloud platform and I missed some examples.
I also got a bit confused with the build process and stuff. But I can do better than complaint :-)
I will pull down the rep and fix it. ;-) Thanks!

[nbering]

Yes, I find Go-lang in general to be a bit confusing to build, though it has improved even just since I started this project last summer. I might try to tackle developer documentation at some point... but I'm hoping I can just point to the build instructions for another Terraform provider. No sense in re-writing the documentation for the wheel.

[jtopjian]

@nbering Are you looking for clear instructions on how to build this provider? If so, I can write those up.

[danielporto]

Thanks!
I was building a dockerfile to pack the dependencies. But I guess the terraform-inventory is in your src dir and I couldn't compile. I will definitely appreciate that too.
I manage to make it work with GCP and I'm just finishing up some minor adjustments :D

[jtopjian]

The succinct instructions would be something like:

1. Make sure you have Go installed. Personally I use gimme to install it:

$ sudo wget -O /usr/local/bin/gimme https://raw.githubusercontent.com/travis-ci/gimme/master/gimme
$ sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/gimme
$ gimme 1.9 (or 1.10 which was just released)
# copy the output to your `.bashrc` and source `.bashrc`.

2. Compile:

$ go get github.com/nbering/terraform-provider-ansible
$ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/nbering/terraform-provider-ansible
$ make
$ cp $GOPATH/bin/terraform-provider-ansible /path/to/where/terraform/is (or one of the directories mentioned here https://www.terraform.io/docs/plugins/basics.html#installing-a-plugin)

Let me know how the above works and what needs clarified. I'm in the unfortunate position of having assumed knowledge when it comes to this 😄

I have no idea how to build and package this into a Docker image, though -- not much experience there.

[nbering]

I compile in CI with nothing more than the standard golang image with a few tweaks to install gox for convenient cross-compilation and the zip debian package to compress the binaries. Those extras are included in my release build script which is checked-in.

I probably don't even need gox, but I was working from the Terraform core build script which also uses gox.

Given that I run in CI from the repo and an image I don't even use in development, everything should be there for a successful build. For the terraform-inventory script, I kept that in a separate repo just because they can easily version independently for the most part, and the installation process is different for each part.

[nbering]

@jtopjian Funny... I never really thought to use go get for my own project, but then the repo was created on my machine. 😆

[jtopjian]

I probably don't even need gox

I believe you can do cross-compiling with go natively, but gox is a great tool to simplify the process.

[rob-smallshire]

Using the instructions from @jtopjian above, I'm getting the following failure when building this plugin:

$ go get github.com/nbering/terraform-provider-ansible
# github.com/nbering/terraform-provider-ansible/vendor/github.com/hashicorp/terraform/config
go/src/github.com/nbering/terraform-provider-ansible/vendor/github.com/hashicorp/terraform/config/testing.go:9: t.Helper undefined (type *testing.T has no field or method Helper)

I'm not familiar with Go, so not sure how to proceed.

[rob-smallshire]

To answer my own point above, in my particular case I had too old a version of Go installed. If it's possible for the source to require a minimum Go version, that would be helpful.

[nbering]

Terraform core recommends Go 1.6+
https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform#dependencies

Most of the implementation for this project comes from there, so that should be a good guideline.

[jtopjian]

The 1.6+ note is about the minimum Go version that will use the vendor directory. A little higher up there's:

If you wish to work on Terraform itself or any of its built-in providers, you'll first need Go installed on your machine (version 1.9+ is required).

IMO the 1.6 note should be removed... It's not possible to compile Terraform with 1.6. The error shown above (t.Helper) is specific to 1.9.

[rob-smallshire]

Indeed. I was struggling with 1.8 today. Upgrading to 1.10 got me moving again.

[nbering]

That's an interesting note. You're welcome to make a PR against the readme, or I'll updated it when I get a chance.

[jtopjian]

@nbering Do you mean a PR to add compile instructions to this repo's readme? I can certainly do that :)

[nbering]

@jtopjian provided a very nice breakdown for build and installation instructions. I'm going to call this closed. Please open new issues as a separate ticket, even if it's related. I'd like to break documentation issues into smaller units to make them easier for anyone to come in a pick up.