Valid tfvars found outside of root configuration reporting as incorrect syntax

[sheppyj]

Extension Version

2.28.0

VS Code Version

Version: 1.82.2 (Universal)
Commit: abd2f3db4bdb28f9e95536dfa84d8479f1eb312d
Date: 2023-09-14T05:59:47.790Z (3 wks ago)
Electron: 25.8.1
ElectronBuildId: 23779380
Chromium: 114.0.5735.289
Node.js: 18.15.0
V8: 11.4.183.29-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 22.6.0

Operating System

macOS Ventura 13.6 (22G120)

Terraform Version

Terraform v1.4.6 on darwin_arm64

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create simple Terraform configuration
2. Create variables file environment/dev/terraform.tfvars

valid tfvars file reporting as having incorrect syntax;

Expected Behavior

Valid HCL tfvars aren't highlighted.

Actual Behavior

Error;
Unexpected attribute: An attribute named "test" is not expected here Terraform

Terraform Configuration

output.tf
variable "test" {
    type = string
}

output "test" {
  value       = var.test
}

environment/dev/terraform.tfvars
test = "hello"

Project Structure

.
├── environment
│   └── dev
│       └── terraform.tfvars
└── output.tf

Gist

No response

Anything Else?

No response

Workarounds

Dragging and dropping tfvars into root directory appear to work, syntax highlighting seems to behave as expected.

Reverting to previous version of extension 2.27.2

References

No response

Help Wanted

• I'm interested in contributing a fix myself

Community Note

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[radeksimko]

This is helpful, thank you @sheppyj

It looks like we didn't give enough consideration to manually loaded *.tfvars files. Apologies for the confusion.

I think the best solution for now may be just excluding any non-autoloaded tfvars files from validation entirely as we cannot tell which module to they belong to.

I will look into implementing that patch.

[radeksimko]

We actually already ignore non-autoloaded *.tfvars, which can be demonstrated below:

Admittedly we still compute the diagnostics in this case but avoid publishing them. It's not a user-visible problem right now nonetheless.

---

What we do not account for however is a situation of a *.tfvars files with "autoloaded naming convention" (i.e. terraform.tfvars or *.auto.tfvars) in a random place which is not a module. That seems like a totally reasonable use case / naming, so we should account for it!

I have a patch which seems to be addressing the problem based on quick manual testing:

• fix: Avoid validating *.tfvars outside of modules terraform-ls#1447

I will post update when it gets merged & reaches a release.

[radeksimko]

A new version 2.28.1 was just released. This fixes the reported bug. The update should appear automatically in VS Code.

Thank you for the timing and level of detail in your report @sheppyj

---

In case you experience any different validation related bug, please do let us know through a new issue.

[ufonalim]

@radeksimko I've same issue with *.tfvars' "Unexpected attribute" outside of module. plugin version is 2.28.2, what else I can check?

[radeksimko]

@ufonalim Please file a new issue and attach more details, we'll be happy to look into it.

Just because the error message is the same does not always mean it's (a) the same bug, or (b) it is a bug at all.

Thanks!