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Command: workspace delete

The tofu workspace delete command is used to delete an existing workspace.

Usage​

Usage: tofu workspace delete [OPTIONS] NAME [DIR]

This command will delete the specified workspace.

To delete a workspace, it must already exist, it must not be tracking resources, and it must not be your current workspace. If the workspace is tracking resources, OpenTofu will not allow you to delete it unless the -force flag is specified.

Additionally, different backends may implement other restrictions on whether a workspace is considered safe to delete without the -force flag, such as whether the workspace is locked.

If you delete a workspace which is tracking resources (via -force), then resources may become "dangling". These are resources that physically exist but that OpenTofu can no longer manage. This is sometimes preferred: you may want OpenTofu to stop managing resources, so they can be managed some other way. Most of the time, however, this is not intended and so OpenTofu protects you from getting into this situation.

The command-line flags are all optional. The only supported flags are:

  • -force - Delete the workspace even if it is tracking resources. After deletion, OpenTofu can no longer track or manage the workspace's infrastructure. Defaults to false.

  • -lock=false - Don't hold a state lock during the operation. This is dangerous if others might concurrently run commands against the same workspace.

  • -lock-timeout=DURATION - Duration to retry a state lock. Default 0s.

  • -var 'NAME=VALUE' - Sets a value for a single input variable declared in the root module of the configuration. Use this option multiple times to set more than one variable. Refer to Input Variables on the Command Line for more information.

  • -var-file=FILENAME - Sets values for potentially many input variables declared in the root module of the configuration, using definitions from a "tfvars" file. Use this option multiple times to include values from more than one file.

There are several other ways to set values for input variables in the root module, aside from the -var and -var-file options. Refer to Assigning Values to Root Module Variables for more information.

Example​

Code Block
$ tofu workspace delete example
Deleted workspace "example".