Terraform Variable Precedence Explained | tfvars, TF_VAR, -var & -var-file

🏗️ Terraform Variable Precedence — Complete Guide! 🚀 You have variables in tfvars, CLI flags, environment variables & defaults… But which value does Terraform ACTUALLY use? 🤔 This video explains the EXACT Terraform variable precedence order every DevOps engineer must know 👇 📌 What You’ll Learn: ✅ What Variable Precedence means in Terraform ✅ Why precedence matters in real-world deployments ✅ Default values in variables.tf ✅ TF_VAR_ environment variables explained ✅ terraform.tfvars vs *.auto.tfvars ✅ -var-file for multi-environment setups ✅ Why -var flag always wins ✅ Common mistakes that break PROD deployments ⚠️ 🔥 One wrong variable value can deploy the WRONG infrastructure to production! ────────────────────────────── 📌 CHAPTERS ────────────────────────────── 00:00 — Intro 00:34 — Why Variable Precedence Matters 01:25 — Complete Priority Order Explained 02:34 — Notes Overview 05:30 — Hardcoded Values in main.tf 08:30 — Variable Declaration in variables.tf 10:53 — Priority 1 → Default Values 13:44 — Priority 2 → TF_VAR_ Environment Variables 15:07 — Priority 3 → terraform.tfvars 16:35 — Priority 4 → terraform.tfvars.json 18:00 — Priority 5 → *.auto.tfvars 19:00 — Priority 6 → -var-file Flag 20:17 — Priority 7 → -var Flag (Highest Priority) 20:40 — Outro ────────────────────────────── 📂 RESOURCES & NOTES ────────────────────────────── 📘 GitHub Notes: https://github.com/pythondevop12/Terraform-master-classes/blob/main/variable_precedence/var_precedence.md 🎬 Complete Terraform Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLvWOsIId0ifCriPmhGrwz6Tc_wAtWMD8V ────────────────────────────── 🛠️ COMMANDS USED ────────────────────────────── # Apply with highest priority variable terraform apply -var="bucket_name=my-bucket" # Apply using environment-specific variables terraform apply -var-file="prod.tfvars" # Export environment variable export TF_VAR_bucket_name=my-bucket # Preview infrastructure changes terraform plan ────────────────────────────── 🔔 FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE ────────────────────────────── Subscribe to PythonDevOps for weekly AWS & DevOps content 🚀 📸 Instagram → @PythonDevOps ▶️ YouTube → @PythonDevOps ────────────────────────────── 🔎 RELATED VIDEOS ────────────────────────────── ▶ Terraform Variables & Outputs ▶ Terraform S3 Creation ▶ Terraform Modules (Coming Soon) ▶ Terraform for Beginners Series #Terraform #DevOps #AWS #IaC #CloudEngineering #TerraformTutorial #InfrastructureAsCode #DevOpsEngineer #Cloud #AWSCloud #TerraformBeginner