Installing and Getting Started

This lesson walks you through installing Terraform, understanding the directory structure, configuring your first provider, and running the core workflow: init, plan, apply, and destroy.

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Installing Terraform

macOS

brew tap hashicorp/tap
brew install hashicorp/tap/terraform

Linux (Ubuntu / Debian)

wget -O - https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/hashicorp-archive-keyring.gpg] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/hashicorp.list
sudo apt update && sudo apt install terraform

Windows

choco install terraform

Verify Installation

terraform version
# Terraform v1.x.x

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Project Structure

A typical Terraform project looks like this:

my-project/
├── main.tf          # Primary resource definitions
├── variables.tf     # Input variable declarations
├── outputs.tf       # Output value declarations
├── providers.tf     # Provider configuration
├── terraform.tfvars # Variable values (often gitignored)
├── .terraform/      # Downloaded providers and modules (gitignored)
├── .terraform.lock.hcl  # Dependency lock file (committed)
└── terraform.tfstate    # State file (gitignored if using remote backend)

Tip: While you can put everything in a single .tf file, splitting by concern (main.tf, variables.tf, outputs.tf) is a widely followed convention.

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Providers