How to Install Terraform on Windows 10 System
Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool by HashiCorp. It lets you automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure on your favourite cloud provider.
Related: 5 Ways to Create and Manage Resources on AWS
However, before you can create a resource using Terraform, you must install it on your system. In this beginner-friendly post, I will show you, how to install Terraform on Windows 10 system.
Okay?
Let’s go ahead…
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How to Install Terraform on Windows 10?
Terraform is distributed as a single binary package. You can install Terraform manually or use a package manager for Windows like chocolatey.
In this tutorial, we are installing Terraform manually on my Windows 10 machine.
Steps to Install Terraform on Windows 10 Manually
- Download Terraform Binary Package
- Unzip the Archive
- Setup Windows Path Variable
- Verify Terraform Installation
- What’s Next?
Let’s start.
Step 1: Download Terraform Binary Package
Navigate to the official Terraform download page
Go to the Windows tab, and you will see two different options as shown below-
Choose Amd64 if your windows system is 64 bits and choose 386 if your system is 32 bits. Just click on that link and the package gets downloaded as a zip archive in your system as seen below.
Step 2: Unzip the Archive
Copy the downloaded archive into a specific folder where you want to keep terraform. After copying, just extract/unzip the binary.
Step 3: Setup Windows Path Variable
Why Set Path?
You might say that I installed Terraform and now I can use it. Well, you can if you try it from the same folder. However, if you try it out from any other folder or path, you will have to specify the full path of the package every time which is very very inconvenient.
Setting the PATH variable for a program allows you to run it from anywhere on the system without having to specify its absolute path.
Now we know why we need to set a path, let’s go ahead and set it up.
Once you unzip the package, go inside the folder and you see terraform application. Copy the path from the address bar as shown below and keep it handy as we will need it during environment variable setup.
In the Windows menu search bar, type ‘environment‘ and click on Edit system environment variable
As soon as you click on it, it opens the below window
Click on Environment Variables and a window opens like below.
From the bottom section in the above screenshot for system variables, select Path variable and click Edit
Click New, paste the terraform path in the box and hit enter.
Click OK. click OK again as two window gets opened up in the process.
Step 4: Verify Terraform Installation
Once you have done the Path setup, you can verify terraform installation by using terraform –version command from the command line.
terraform --version
As you hit enter, you see the version of the terraform installed in your system as seen above.
If you got that, congratulation !!!
If not and you get terraform not recognized error, close the command line and open a new one. You can also try running the below command and windows should detect it.
refreshenvAfter that if you run terraform –version command again, I am sure Cmd will recognize and you will see the successful terraform installation.
What’s Next?
Once you have installed Terraform on your Windows 10 system, you are almost ready to create your first resource on your favourite cloud provider for ex AWS.
All you need now is to authenticate Terraform with AWS so that it can talk with AWS safely and provision resources on your behalf.
I have covered this for you in a tutorial: Getting started with Terraform on AWS in right way
Conclusion:
In this post on “How to Install Terraform on Windows 10 System”, we learnt to install Terraform on Windows 10 machine.
We did the installation manually by downloading the archive, unzipping and setting the path of terraform binary. Finally, we verified the installation by terraform –version command.
I hope you were able to install it on your system. Please let me know in the comment section in case you have any doubts.
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