remove empty state files after all infrastructure is destroyed

[scott-doyland-burrows]

Current Terraform Version

0.13.2

Use-cases

We deploy IaC via Azure DevOps pipelines. Each of our deploys is based off a pull request number. Both the infrastructure and terraform statefiles have the PR number in the name, eg a terraform statefile would be named:

$(project).$(PRnumber).terraform.tfstate

The infrastructure is destroyed once the PR is complete. However terraform leave a 156byte statefile in place on the Azure backend blob storage.

Could terraform be altered to delete the statefile if it is empty (ie if it has no infrastructure defined in it).

Currently we end up with hundreds of tiny 156byte statefiles that we have to delete outside of terraform.

Thanks,
Scott

[RubenDelange]

hi @scott-doyland-burrows - would you care to explain how you achieve the "infra is destroyed once PR is completed"? Are you using a webhook to invoke "terraform destroy" when the PR is actually completed? Or are you using a separate release that does "terraform destroy" on scheduled times? The latter option is a bit of a poor solution imo, but atm, I can't seem to implement a better one.
Any advice is welcome, thanks in advance!

[scott-doyland-burrows]

Hi,
We just do:
PR triggers build pipeline
build pipeline triggers release
release runs:
terraform apply
tests (can be automated or manual)
manual intervention step (to check tests worked if they are manual)
terraform destroy

I think at that point the PR is completed and/or we can do some more manual checks of the code etc if we want.

[mkjpryor]

+1 for this

We do exactly the same thing

[sreekanthrb]

+1

After infrastructure is destroyed we expect the tfstate file should get deleted automatically

But we see 181 B file

[crw]

If you are viewing this issue and would like to indicate your interest, please use the 👍 reaction on the issue description to upvote this issue. We also welcome additional use case descriptions. Thanks again!

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[StevenSavant]

+1
Just noticed this as well. I can see an argument for keeping an empty file for posterity, but I would default to thinking the file should be deleted if the resource is as well.