How to use the Bitbucket Terraform Provider

Most infrastructure as code pipelines have two core parts: an IaC platform like Terraform or OpenTofu, and a version control system (VCS) like Bitbucket. Terraform defines and provisions infrastructure through a declarative configuration language, and pairing it with Bitbucket adds a layer of control and collaboration. People usually think of pull request automation when they hear "Bitbucket and Terraform," and the second half of this post covers that. First, though, we'll look at using Terraform to manage your Bitbucket configuration itself, plus the integration Scalr has with Bitbucket.

What Is the Bitbucket Terraform Provider and How Do You Choose One?

What is the Bitbucket Terraform Provider?

Terraform uses providers to talk to endpoint APIs and create resources. The Bitbucket Terraform provider sits between your infrastructure code and Bitbucket Cloud or Bitbucket Datacenter. You use it to define and manage Bitbucket resources (such as repositories and projects) right inside your Terraform modules and code. That means your repository configurations are codified, version-controlled, and easy to reproduce across environments.

Picking the right provider matters here. Tools like Okta and GitLab have officially supported providers, but Bitbucket is community driven, so you want the one that's maintained and used the most. Searching the standard Terraform registry didn't help me much, since it gives you almost nothing to compare on.

Instead, I used library.tf, a registry maintained by Scalr, which gave me the insights I needed to make the decision on which provider to use:

Screenshot of Providers from Library.tf

As seen above, there is only one provider that has been updated in the last year and has frequent commits, when clicking on the provider I can also see the number of contributors, open issues, and more to help me make my decision on using this Bitbucket provider.

Prerequisites

Before getting into the common use cases of using the Bitbucket Terraform provider, ensure that you have the following prerequisites in place:

1. Terraform Installed: Make sure you have Terraform or OpenTofu installed on your machine. You can download the latest versions from Terraform or OpenTofu websites.
2. Bitbucket Cloud Account: You'll need a Bitbucket account with the necessary permissions to manage Bitbucket resources. If you don't have a Bitbucket account, sign up for one on the Bitbucket website. Bitbucket server is also an option, but we'll focus on Bitbucket cloud in this example.
3. Bitbucket secret (optional): Bitbucket supports authentication through a username/password, OAuth client ID and secret, or token.
4. Scalr Account: If you want to use Scalr as the remote backend, sign up for a free account here. Feel free to use this as a development environment while you explore Scalr.

How Do You Authenticate and Use the Bitbucket Provider?

The next few steps cover how to authenticate to the provider, then walk through some basic examples of using it.

Define Required Providers and Provider Configuration

Start by configuring the Bitbucket Terraform provider in your Terraform code. Open your Terraform configuration file (commonly named main.tf) and add the following block:

Replace "your-username" with your Bitbucket username and "your-password" with the password you use for Bitbucket. The latest version of the Bitbucket Terraform provider documentation can be found here.

Manage Repos

Now, let's create a Bitbucket repository using the Bitbucket Terraform resource. This can all be viewed in detail in the Terraform registry here. Add the following code to your configuration:

This Terraform code defines a resource "example_repo" that is set to be private.

Manage Groups

In this example, we'll manage the groups in Bitbucket and what permissions they have. In this case, we'll also use a data source to pull the workspace ID:

This Terraform code defines a resource "example_group" and sets the groups permissions to read.

Run Terraform Commands

Once you've defined your Bitbucket resources through the Bitbucket Terraform provider, navigate to the directory containing your Terraform configuration file and run the following commands:

If you are using OpenTofu, use the tofu commands instead:

Terraform will initialize the Bitbucket provider and apply the changes to your Bitbucket account. Upon a successful Terraform run, the state file will be created.

What Best Practices Improve Advanced Bitbucket Provider Usage?

Variables and Dynamic Configurations

Use Terraform variables to make your configurations more dynamic. Instead of hardcoding values, use variables so your scripts stay reusable and flexible.

Remote State Management

Consider using remote state management to store your Terraform state files securely. Services like Scalr or AWS S3 can be configured as remote backends to store state files. Here is an example of connecting to Scalr:

Data Sources

To improve your Terraform code, look at using Bitbucket data sources to pull information from other resources or workspaces into the run.

What Can You Do Next With the Bitbucket Provider?

So far we've covered the basic steps to configure the Bitbucket Terraform provider, create repositories and groups, and apply a few best practices. From here, the provider supports plenty of other Bitbucket resources worth a look, such as branches, deploy keys, and projects. The library.tf documentation for the provider is a good place to find more detail and examples.

Once your repositories, projects, and groups live in Terraform code, you create and change them with the same plan-and-apply workflow you already use for cloud infrastructure, and the configuration sits in version control alongside everything else.

How Does Scalr Integrate With Bitbucket?

Now let's switch gears and look at Bitbucket as part of your overall Terraform pipeline, and how it connects to Scalr.

Bitbucket as a VCS Repo

When talking about Terraform and Bitbucket, the number one best practice is to make sure your Terraform files are stored in a VCS repository, like Bitbucket. By storing the Terraform configuration in a Bitbucket repository, you enable the following for your infrastructure teams:

• Tracking Changes: A VCS keeps track of changes made to Terraform source code files within a Bitbucket repo. Each change is associated with a commit, which includes details such as who made the Terraform code changes, when it was made, and a description of the modifications.
• Collaboration: When several developers work on the same Bitbucket repository at once, each one can make changes independently. The VCS then merges those changes, which prevents conflicts and keeps the Terraform codebase coherent.
• History and Rollback: Because the VCS keeps a complete history of every change to the Terraform code, developers can roll back to a previous version if something breaks, or check when a specific change was introduced.
• Branching and Merging: Branches are independent lines of Terraform code development, which makes them useful for new features, bug fixes, or experimental changes that you don't want touching the main codebase yet. Open a merge request and you can automatically trigger a "Terraform dry run" in tools like Scalr or Terraform Cloud, which executes a Terraform plan and sends the results back into Bitbucket. If those results come back clean, developers merge the code and the changes move from one branch into another.
• Code Review: A VCS shows a clear view of the changes in a commit, so reviewers can assess the modifications, leave comments, and suggest improvements before anything merges into the main branch.

Using Bitbucket with a TACO (Terraform Collaboration and Automation Platform)

If you are looking for a TACO, such as Scalr or Terraform Cloud, to help scale your Terraform operations, the integration with Bitbucket is a key feature. By integrating these tools with Bitbucket, you are not only able to pull in the Terraform code but also enable the following features:

• Terraform Private Module Registry: On top of storing your Terraform code in Bitbucket for the reasons stated above, another best practice is to implement a Terraform Private Module Registry to store your Terraform modules. When doing this, you store your Terraform modules in Bitbucket repos, integrate Scalr or Terraform Cloud with Bitbucket and then pull the Terraform modules in for use by your DevOps teams. By doing this, Bitbucket is still the source of truth for the code, but you can now curate a list of approved modules for your teams to use.
• GitOps Workflow: A GitOps workflow for Terraform is usually the goal for most DevOps teams. A GitOps workflow can use the Bitbucket branching and merging to automatically kick off Terraform dry runs as well as Terraform applies. The flow is typically as follows: A branch, let's call it dev, is created based on the main branch. Terraform code is updated in the dev branch. A merge request is opened up against the main branch from dev. Based on the merge request being opened, the TACO will automatically execute a Terraform dry run and send the results back to Bitbucket pipelines. Admins can optionally (considered a best practice though) set branch policies to only allow a merge request if all checks come back successfully from the TACO. Once the merge request is approved the Terraform apply will execute in the TACO.
• Open Policy Agent: Open Policy Agent (OPA) with Terraform enables declarative policy enforcement for the Terraform code, allowing admins to define and enforce fine-grained policies to govern the provisioning workflow. Typically, the OPA policies are stored in Bitbucket and then pulled into Scalr or Terraform Cloud to enforce them in the core workflow.

The TACO products have a full feature set dedicated to Terraform, including the ability to store Terraform state files. See more here.