Terraform Module Registry

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• Infrastructure registry and Terraform Module Registry merged into a single Terraform Module Registry feature in GitLab 15.11.
• Support for groups introduced in GitLab 16.9.

With the Terraform Module Registry, you can use GitLab projects as a private registry for terraform modules. You can create and publish modules with GitLab CI/CD, which can then be consumed from other private projects.

View Terraform modules

• Support for Readme files introduced in GitLab 17.2.

To view Terraform modules in your project or group:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your project or group.
2. Select Operate > Terraform modules.

You can search, sort, and filter modules on this page.

You can also view the module's Readme file by selecting a module, and then selecting Readme.

Authenticate to the Terraform Module Registry

To authenticate to the Terraform Module Registry, you need either:

• A personal access token with at least read_api rights.
• A CI/CD job token.
• A deploy token with the read_package_registry or write_package_registry scope, or both.

Do not use authentication methods other than the methods documented here. Undocumented authentication methods might be removed in the future.

Publish a Terraform module

When you publish a Terraform module, if it does not exist, it is created.

Using the API

You can publish Terraform modules by using the Terraform Module Registry API.

Prerequisites:

• Unless duplicates are allowed, the package name and version must be unique in the top-level namespace.
• Your project and group names must not include a dot (.). For example, source = "gitlab.example.com/my.group/project.name".
• You must authenticate with the API. If authenticating with a deploy token, it must be configured with the write_package_registry scope.
• Unless duplicates are allowed, the name of a module must be unique in the scope of its group, otherwise an error occurs.

PUT /projects/:id/packages/terraform/modules/:module-name/:module-system/:module-version/file

Provide the file content in the request body.

As the following example shows, requests must end with /file. If you send a request ending with something else, it results in a 404 error {"error":"404 Not Found"}.

Example request using a personal access token:

curl --fail-with-body --header "PRIVATE-TOKEN: <your_access_token>" \
     --upload-file path/to/file.tgz \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_project_id>/packages/terraform/modules/my-module/my-system/0.0.1/file"

Example request using a deploy token:

curl --fail-with-body --header "DEPLOY-TOKEN: <deploy_token>" \
     --upload-file path/to/file.tgz \
     "https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/projects/<your_project_id>/packages/terraform/modules/my-module/my-system/0.0.1/file"

Example response:

{
  "message":"201 Created"
}

Using a CI/CD template (recommended)

• Introduced in GitLab 15.9.

You can use the Terraform-Module.gitlab-ci.yml or the advanced Terraform/Module-Base.gitlab-ci.yml CI/CD template to publish a Terraform module to the GitLab terraform registry:

include:
  template: Terraform-Module.gitlab-ci.yml

The pipeline contains the following jobs:

• fmt - Validate the formatting of the Terraform module.
• kics-iac-sast - Test the Terraform module for security issues.
• deploy - For tag pipelines only. Deploy the Terraform module to the Terraform Module Registry.

Pipeline variables

You can configure the pipeline with the following variables:

Using CI/CD manually

To work with Terraform modules in GitLab CI/CD, you can use CI_JOB_TOKEN in place of the personal access token in your commands.

For example, this job uploads a new module for the local system provider and uses the module version from the Git commit tag:

stages:
  - deploy

upload:
  stage: deploy
  image: curlimages/curl:latest
  variables:
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_DIR: ${CI_PROJECT_DIR}    # The relative path to the root directory of the Terraform project.
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME: ${CI_PROJECT_NAME}  # The name of your Terraform module, must not have any spaces or underscores (will be translated to hyphens).
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM: local             # The system or provider your Terraform module targets (ex. local, aws, google).
    TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION: ${CI_COMMIT_TAG} # The version - it's recommended to follow SemVer for Terraform Module Versioning.
  script:
    - TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME=$(echo "${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}" | tr " _" -) # module-name must not have spaces or underscores, so translate them to hyphens
    - tar -vczf /tmp/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}.tgz -C ${TERRAFORM_MODULE_DIR} --exclude=./.git .
    - 'curl --fail-with-body --location --header "JOB-TOKEN: ${CI_JOB_TOKEN}"
         --upload-file /tmp/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}-${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}.tgz
         ${CI_API_V4_URL}/projects/${CI_PROJECT_ID}/packages/terraform/modules/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_NAME}/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_SYSTEM}/${TERRAFORM_MODULE_VERSION}/file'
  rules:
    - if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG

To trigger this upload job, add a Git tag to your commit. Ensure the tag follows the Semantic versioning specification that Terraform requires. The rules:if: $CI_COMMIT_TAG ensures that only tagged commits to your repository trigger the module upload job. For other ways to control jobs in your CI/CD pipeline, refer to the CI/CD YAML syntax reference.

Allow duplicate Terraform modules

• Introduced in GitLab 16.8.
• Required role changed from Maintainer to Owner in GitLab 17.0.

By default, the Terraform Module Registry enforces uniqueness for module names in the same namespace.

To allow publishing duplicate module names:

1. On the left sidebar, select Search or go to and find your group.
2. Select Settings > Packages and registries.
3. In the Terraform module row of the Duplicate packages table, turn off the Allow duplicates toggle.
4. Optional. In the Exceptions text box, enter a regular expression that matches the names of packages to allow.

Your changes are automatically saved.

You can also allow publishing duplicate names by enabling terraform_module_duplicates_allowed in the GraphQL API.

To allow duplicates with specific names:

1. Ensure terraform_module_duplicates_allowed is disabled.
2. Use terraform_module_duplicate_exception_regex to define a regex pattern for the module names you want to allow duplicates for.

The top-level namespace setting takes precedence over the child namespace settings. For example, if you enable terraform_module_duplicates_allowed for a group, and disable it for a subgroup, duplicates are allowed for all projects in the group and its subgroups.

Reference a Terraform module

Prerequisites:

• You need to authenticate with the API. If authenticating with a personal access token, it must be configured with the read_api scope.

From a namespace

You can provide authentication tokens (job tokens, personal access tokens, or deploy tokens) for terraform in environment variables.

You should add the prefix TF_TOKEN_ to the domain name of environment variables, with periods encoded as underscores. See the Terraform CLI configuration documentation.

For example, the value of a variable named TF_TOKEN_gitlab_com is used as a deploy token when the CLI makes service requests to the hostname gitlab.com:

export TF_TOKEN_gitlab_com='glpat-<deploy_token>'

This method is preferred for enterprise implementations. For local or temporary environments, you might want to create a ~/.terraformrc or %APPDATA%/terraform.rc file:

credentials "gitlab.com" {
  token = "<TOKEN>"
}

Where gitlab.com can be replaced with the hostname of your self-managed GitLab instance.

You can then refer to your Terraform module from a downstream Terraform project:

module "<module>" {
  source = "gitlab.com/<namespace>/<module-name>/<module-system>"
}

Where <namespace> is the namespace of the Terraform Module Registry.

From a project

To reference a Terraform module using a project-level source, use the fetching archives over HTTP source type provided by Terraform.

You can provide authentication tokens (job tokens, personal access tokens, or deploy tokens) for terraform in your ~/.netrc file:

machine gitlab.com
login <USERNAME>
password <TOKEN>

Where gitlab.com can be replaced with the hostname of your self-managed GitLab instance, and <USERNAME> is your token username.

You can refer to your Terraform module from a downstream Terraform project:

module "<module>" {
  source = "https://gitlab.com/api/v4/projects/<project-id>/packages/terraform/modules/<module-name>/<module-system>/<module-version>"
}

If you need to reference the latest version of a module, you can omit the <module-version> from the source URL. To prevent future issues, you should reference a specific version if possible.

If there are duplicate module names in the same namespace, referencing the module from the namespace level installs the recently published module. To reference a specific version of a duplicate module, use the project-level source type.

Download a Terraform module

To download a Terraform module:

1. On the left sidebar, select Operate > Terraform modules.
2. Select the name of the module you want to download.
3. In the Activity section, select the name of the module you want to download.

How module resolution works

When you upload a new module, GitLab generates a path for the module, for example, https://gitlab.example.com/parent-group/my-infra-package.

• This path conforms with the Terraform spec.
• The name of the path must be unique in the namespace.

For projects in subgroups, GitLab checks that the module name does not already exist anywhere in the namespace, including all subgroups and the parent group.

For example, if:

• The project is gitlab.example.com/parent-group/subgroup/my-project.
• The Terraform module is my-infra-package.

The module name must be unique in all projects in all groups under parent-group.

Delete a Terraform module

You cannot edit a Terraform module after you publish it in the Terraform Module Registry. Instead, you must delete and recreate it.

To delete a module, you must have suitable permissions.

You can delete modules by using the packages API or the UI.

To delete a module in the UI, from your project:

1. On the left sidebar, select Operate > Terraform modules.
2. Find the name of the package you want to delete.
3. Select Delete.

The package is permanently deleted.

Disable the Terraform Module Registry

The Terraform Module Registry is automatically enabled.

For self-managed instances, a GitLab administrator can disable Packages and registries, which removes this menu item from the sidebar.

You can also remove the Terraform Module Registry for a specific project:

1. In your project, go to Settings > General.
2. Expand the Visibility, project features, permissions section and toggle Packages off (in gray).
3. Select Save changes.

To enable it back, follow the same steps above and toggle it on (in blue).

Example projects

For examples of the Terraform Module Registry, check the projects below:

• The GitLab local file project creates a minimal Terraform module and uploads it into the Terraform Module Registry using GitLab CI/CD.
• The Terraform module test project uses the module from the previous example.

Troubleshooting

• Publishing a module with a duplicate name results in a {"message":"A package with the same name already exists in the namespace"} error.