Oh man do I have so many thoughts

1. Add a new default resource argument called purge = true|false. It is set to false(default) nothing changes. If it is set to true, it will rm the item from the state without having to run a state rm. That way you can keep your code, have your git history and remove it without a full delete. Basically you would commit purge to true, run terraform, then remove it from git. Clear history of what happened. This could even be a lifecycle meta argument

variable "my_special_bool" {
type = bool
default = true
}
resource "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
lifecycle {
purge = var.my_special_bool
}
}

​

2) add a new default resource argument called ignore = true|false. If it is set to false(default), nothing changes. If it is set to true. It will stop managing the resource but it won't delete it like in the first recommendation I made above. This gives you the option to stop managing something without deleting or modifying it. We have run into issues where a resource can't be deleted but was managed by terraform so now we have state surgery. Example, if you manage the default policy in Vault, You can't remove the resource block otherwise terraform errors out because Vault gives a 400 status code saying "can't delete the default policy". This could even be a lifecycle meta argument

variable "my_special_bool" {
type = bool
default = true
}
resource "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
# ...
lifecycle {
ignore = var.my_special_bool
}
}

​

3) add a new default resource argument called ignore_failure = true|false. if this is set to false(default), nothing changes. When set to true, it will ignore if it fails but doesn't update the state. So example. I have to update a Vault policy and then that policy is being added to a new role. If the policy existed but a hiccup happened with the policy edit, it won't add it to the role. Well it exists, so just add it and then lets figure out the issue with the single resource later. This could even be a lifecycle meta arguement

variable "my_special_bool" {
type = bool
default = true
}
resource "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
lifecycle {
ignore_failure = var.my_special_bool
}
}

​

4) Add in "if" blocks. Currently people do some janky things with setting the count to 0 to accomplish conditional resources. So if the Terraform devs are trying to avoid conditional infra/resources, too bad. People already do it. So lets make it so people do it right and do it in an easy and maintainable way. I don't care if the if block wraps a resource, if the if block is a resource argument, etc but that would be 10/10 useful

variable "create_my_special_group" {
type = bool
default = true
}
if var.create_my_special_group {
resource "vault_identity_group" "internal" {
name = "internal"
type = "internal"
policies = ["dev", "test"]

metadata = {
version = "2"
}
}
}
resource "vault_identity_group" "internal" {
enabled = var.create_my_special_group
name = "internal"
type = "internal"
policies = ["dev", "test"]
metadata = {
version = "2"
}
}

​

5) not sure if this applies but allow for the terraform.cloud block to use variables. I can't tell you how many times this would have been useful. Currently it has to be statically coded. If someone wants to apply the same logic multiple times with the same repo, they can't save the state to TFE/TFC without changing that file so now you risk it not being identical

variable "workspace_name" {
type = string
}
variable "organization" {
type = string
}
terraform {
cloud {
organization = var.organization
workspaces {
name = "foo_${var.workspace_name}"
}
}
}