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Module Sources

The source argument in a module block tells OpenTofu where to find the source code for the desired child module.

OpenTofu uses this during the module installation step of tofu init to download the source code to a directory on local disk so that other OpenTofu commands can use it.

The module installer supports installation from a number of different source types.

Each of these is described in the following sections. Module source addresses use a URL-like syntax, but with extensions to support unambiguous selection of sources and additional features.

We recommend using local file paths for closely-related modules used primarily for the purpose of factoring out repeated code elements, and using a native OpenTofu module registry for modules intended to be shared by multiple calling configurations. We support other sources so that you can potentially distribute OpenTofu modules internally with existing infrastructure.

Many of the source types will make use of "ambient" credentials available when OpenTofu is run, such as from environment variables or credentials files in your home directory. This is covered in more detail in each of the following sections.

We recommend placing each module that is intended to be re-usable in the root of its own repository or archive file, but it is also possible to reference modules from subdirectories.

Local Paths​

Local path references allow for factoring out portions of a configuration within a single source repository.

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "./consul"
}

A local path must begin with either ./ or ../ to indicate that a local path is intended, to distinguish from a module registry address.

Local paths are special in that they are not "installed" in the same sense that other sources are: the files are already present on local disk (possibly as a result of installing a parent module) and so can just be used directly. Their source code is automatically updated if the parent module is upgraded.

Note that OpenTofu does not consider an absolute filesystem path (starting with a slash, a drive letter, or similar) to be a local path. Instead, OpenTofu will treat that in a similar way as a remote module and copy it into the local module cache. An absolute path is a "package" in the sense described in Modules in Package Sub-directories. We don't recommend using absolute filesystem paths to refer to modules, because it will tend to couple your configuration to the filesystem layout of a particular computer.

Module Registry​

A module registry is the native way of distributing modules for use across multiple configurations, using an OpenTofu-specific protocol that has full support for module versioning.

The Public OpenTofu Registry is an index of modules shared publicly using this protocol. This public registry is the easiest way to get started with OpenTofu and find modules created by others in the community.

You can also use a private registry, either via TACOS (TF Automation and Collaboration Software), or by running a custom service that implements the module registry protocol.

Modules on the public registry can be referenced using a registry source address of the form <NAMESPACE>/<NAME>/<PROVIDER>, with each module's information page on the registry site including the exact address to use.

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "hashicorp/consul/aws"
  version = "0.1.0"
}

The above example will use the Consul module for AWS from a public registry.

For modules hosted in other registries, prefix the source address with an additional <HOSTNAME>/ portion, giving the hostname of the private registry:

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "app.terraform.io/example-corp/k8s-cluster/azurerm"
  version = "1.1.0"
}

Registry modules support versioning. You can provide a specific version as shown in the above examples, or use flexible version constraints.

You can learn more about the registry at the Module Registry documentation.

To access modules from a private registry, you may need to configure an access token in the CLI config. Use the same hostname as used in the module source string. For a private registry within TACOS (TF Automation and Collaboration Software), use the same authentication token as you would use with the API or command-line clients.

GitHub​

OpenTofu will recognize unprefixed github.com URLs and interpret them automatically as Git repository sources.

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "github.com/hashicorp/example"
}

The above address scheme will clone over HTTPS. To clone over SSH, use the following form:

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "[email protected]:hashicorp/example.git"
}

These GitHub schemes are treated as convenient aliases for the general Git repository address scheme, and so they obtain credentials in the same way and support the ref argument for selecting a specific revision. You will need to configure credentials in particular to access private repositories.

Bitbucket​

OpenTofu will recognize unprefixed bitbucket.org URLs and interpret them automatically as BitBucket repositories:

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "bitbucket.org/example-corp/tofu-consul-aws"
}

This shorthand works only for public repositories, because OpenTofu must access the BitBucket API to learn if the given repository uses Git or Mercurial.

OpenTofu treats the result either as a Git source or a Mercurial source depending on the repository type. See the sections on each version control type for information on how to configure credentials for private repositories and how to specify a specific revision to install.

Generic Git Repository​

Arbitrary Git repositories can be used by prefixing the address with the special git:: prefix. After this prefix, any valid Git URL can be specified to select one of the protocols supported by Git.

For example, to use HTTPS or SSH:

Code Block
module "vpc" {
  source = "git::https://example.com/vpc.git"
}

module "storage" {
  source = "git::ssh://[email protected]/storage.git"
}

OpenTofu installs modules from Git repositories by running git clone, and so it will respect any local Git configuration set on your system, including credentials. To access a non-public Git repository, configure Git with suitable credentials for that repository.

If you use the SSH protocol then any configured SSH keys will be used automatically. This is the most common way to access non-public Git repositories from automated systems because it allows access to private repositories without interactive prompts.

If using the HTTP/HTTPS protocol, or any other protocol that uses username/password credentials, configure Git Credentials Storage to select a suitable source of credentials for your environment.

Selecting a Revision​

By default, OpenTofu will clone and use the default branch (referenced by HEAD) in the selected repository. You can override this using the ref argument. The value of the ref argument can be any reference that would be accepted by the git checkout command, such as branch, SHA-1 hash (short or full), or tag names. For a full list of the possible values, see Git Tools - Revision Selection in the Git Book.

Code Block
# select a specific tag
module "vpc" {
  source = "git::https://example.com/vpc.git?ref=v1.2.0"
}

# directly select a commit using its SHA-1 hash
module "storage" {
  source = "git::https://example.com/storage.git?ref=51d462976d84fdea54b47d80dcabbf680badcdb8"
}

Shallow Clone​

For larger repositories you may prefer to make only a shallow clone in order to reduce the time taken to retrieve the remote repository.

The depth URL argument corresponds to the --depth argument to git clone, telling Git to create a shallow clone with the history truncated to only the specified number of commits.

However, because shallow clone requires different Git protocol behavior, setting the depth argument makes OpenTofu pass your ref argument, if any, to the --branch argument to git clone instead. That means it must specify a named branch or tag known to the remote repository, and that raw commit IDs are not acceptable.

Because OpenTofu only uses the most recent selected commit to find the source code of your specified module, it is not typically useful to set depth to any value other than 1.

"scp-like" address syntax​

When using Git over SSH, we recommend using the ssh://-prefixed URL form for consistency with all of the other URL-like git address forms. You may opt to use the alternative "scp-like" syntax instead, in which case you must omit the ssh:// scheme part and include only the git:: part. For example:

Code Block
module "storage" {
  source = "git::[email protected]:storage.git"
}

If you use the ssh:// URL scheme then OpenTofu will assume that the colon marks the beginning of a port number, rather than the beginning of the path. This matches how Git itself interprets these different forms, aside from the OpenTofu-specific git:: selector prefix.

Generic Mercurial Repository​

You can use arbitrary Mercurial repositories by prefixing the address with the special hg:: prefix. After this prefix, any valid Mercurial URL can be specified to select one of the protocols supported by Mercurial.

Code Block
module "vpc" {
  source = "hg::http://example.com/vpc.hg"
}

OpenTofu installs modules from Mercurial repositories by running hg clone, and so it will respect any local Mercurial configuration set on your system, including credentials. To access a non-public repository, configure Mercurial with suitable credentials for that repository.

If you use the SSH protocol then any configured SSH keys will be used automatically. This is the most common way to access non-public Mercurial repositories from automated systems because it allows access to private repositories without interactive prompts.

Selecting a Revision​

You can select a non-default branch or tag using the optional ref argument:

Code Block
module "vpc" {
  source = "hg::http://example.com/vpc.hg?ref=v1.2.0"
}

HTTP URLs​

When you use an HTTP or HTTPS URL, OpenTofu will make a GET request to the given URL, which can return another source address. This indirection allows using HTTP URLs as a sort of "vanity redirect" over a more complicated module source address.

OpenTofu will append an additional query string argument tofu-get=1 to the given URL before sending the GET request, allowing the server to optionally return a different result when OpenTofu is requesting it.

If the response is successful (200-range status code), OpenTofu looks in the following locations in order for the next address to access:

  • The value of a response header field named X-Terraform-Get.

  • If the response is an HTML page, a meta element with the name tofu-get:

    Code Block
    <meta name="tofu-get" content="github.com/hashicorp/example" />

In either case, the result is interpreted as another module source address using one of the forms documented elsewhere on this page.

If an HTTP/HTTPS URL requires authentication credentials, use a .netrc file to configure the credentials. By default, OpenTofu searches for the .netrc file in your HOME directory. However, you can override the default filesystem location by setting the NETRC environment variable. For information on the .netrc format, refer to the documentation for using it in curl.

Fetching archives over HTTP​

As a special case, if OpenTofu detects that the URL has a common file extension associated with an archive file format then it will bypass the special tofu-get=1 redirection described above and instead just use the contents of the referenced archive as the module source code:

Code Block
module "vpc" {
  source = "https://example.com/vpc-module.zip"
}

The extensions that OpenTofu recognizes for this special behavior are:

  • zip
  • tar.bz2 and tbz2
  • tar.gz and tgz
  • tar.xz and txz

If your URL doesn't have one of these extensions but refers to an archive anyway, use the archive argument to force this interpretation:

Code Block
module "vpc" {
  source = "https://example.com/vpc-module?archive=zip"
}

S3 Bucket​

You can use archives stored in S3 as module sources using the special s3:: prefix, followed by an S3 bucket object URL.

Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "s3::https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/examplecorp-tofu-modules/vpc.zip"
}

The s3:: prefix causes OpenTofu to use AWS-style authentication when accessing the given URL. As a result, this scheme may also work for other services that mimic the S3 API, as long as they handle authentication in the same way as AWS.

The resulting object must be an archive with one of the same file extensions as for archives over standard HTTP. OpenTofu will extract the archive to obtain the module source tree.

The module installer looks for AWS credentials in the following locations, preferring those earlier in the list when multiple are available:

  • The AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID and AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY environment variables.
  • The default profile in the .aws/credentials file in your home directory.
  • If running on an EC2 instance, temporary credentials associated with the instance's IAM Instance Profile.

GCS Bucket​

You can use archives stored in Google Cloud Storage as module sources using the special gcs:: prefix, followed by a GCS bucket object URL.

For example

  • gcs::https://www.googleapis.com/storage/v1/BUCKET_NAME/PATH_TO_MODULE
  • gcs::https://www.googleapis.com/storage/v1/BUCKET_NAME/PATH/TO/module.zip
Code Block
module "consul" {
  source = "gcs::https://www.googleapis.com/storage/v1/modules/foomodule.zip"
}

The module installer uses Google Cloud SDK to authenticate with GCS. You can use any of the following methods to set Google Cloud Platform credentials:

  • Set the GOOGLE_OAUTH_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable to a raw Google Cloud Platform OAuth access token.
  • Enter the path of your service account key file in the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable.
  • If you're running OpenTofu from a GCE instance, default credentials are automatically available. See Creating and Enabling Service Accounts for Instances for more details.
  • On your computer, you can make your Google identity available by running gcloud auth application-default login.

Modules in Package Sub-directories​

When the source of a module is a version control repository or archive file (generically, a "package"), the module itself may be in a sub-directory relative to the root of the package.

A special double-slash syntax is interpreted by OpenTofu to indicate that the remaining path after that point is a sub-directory within the package. For example:

  • hashicorp/consul/aws//modules/consul-cluster
  • git::https://example.com/network.git//modules/vpc
  • https://example.com/network-module.zip//modules/vpc
  • s3::https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/examplecorp-tofu-modules/network.zip//modules/vpc

If the source address has arguments, such as the ref argument supported for the version control sources, the sub-directory portion must be before those arguments:

  • git::https://example.com/network.git//modules/vpc?ref=v1.2.0
  • github.com/hashicorp/example//modules/vpc?ref=v1.2.0

OpenTofu will still extract the entire package to local disk, but will read the module from the subdirectory. As a result, it is safe for a module in a sub-directory of a package to use a local path to another module as long as it is in the same package.