»APT Packages for Debian and Ubuntu

The primary distribution packages for Terraform are .zip archives containing single executable files that you can extract anywhere on your system. However, for easier integration with configuration management tools and other systematic system configuration strategies, we also offer package repositories for Debian and Ubuntu systems, which allow you to install Terraform using the apt install command or any other APT frontend.

If you are instead using Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, or Fedora, you might prefer to install Terraform from our Yum repositories.

»Repository Configuration

The Terraform packages are signed using a private key controlled by HashiCorp, so in most situations the first step would be to configure your system to trust that HashiCorp key for package authentication. For example:

curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

curl -fsSL https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com/gpg | sudo apt-key add -

After registering the key, you can add the official HashiCorp repository to your system:

sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"

sudo apt-add-repository "deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture)] https://apt.releases.hashicorp.com $(lsb_release -cs) main"

The above command line uses the following sub-shell commands:

• dpkg --print-architecture to determine your system's primary APT architecture/ABI, such as amd64.
• lsb_release -cs to find the distribution release codename for your current system, such as buster, groovy, or sid.

apt-add-repository usually automatically runs apt update as part of its work to fetch the new package indices, but if it does not, you will need to manually do so before the packages will be available.

To install Terraform from the new repository:

sudo apt install terraform

sudo apt install terraform

»Supported Architectures

The HashiCorp APT server currently has packages only for the amd64 architecture, which is also sometimes known as x86_64.

There are no official packages available for other architectures, such as arm64. If you wish to use Terraform on a non-amd64 system, download a normal release .zip file instead.

»Supported Debian and Ubuntu Releases

The HashiCorp APT server currently contains release repositories for the following distribution releases:

• Debian 8 (jessie)
• Debian 9 (stretch)
• Debian 10 (buster)
• Ubuntu 16.04 (xenial)
• Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic)
• Ubuntu 19.10 (eoam)
• Ubuntu 20.04 (focal)
• Ubuntu 20.10 (groovy)

No repositories are available for other Debian or Ubuntu versions or any other APT-based Linux distributions. If you add the repository using the above commands on other systems then apt update will report the repository index as missing.

Terraform executables are statically linked and so they depend only on the Linux system call interface, not on any system libraries. Because of that, you may be able to use one of the above release codenames when adding a repository to your system, even if that codename doesn't match your current distribution release.

Over time we will change the set of supported distributions, including both adding support for new releases and ceasing to publish new Terraform versions under older releases.

»Choosing Terraform Versions

The HashiCorp APT repositories contain multiple versions of Terraform, but because the packages are all named terraform it is impossible to install more than one version at a time, and apt install will default to selecting the latest version.

It's often necessary to match your Terraform version with what a particular configuration is currently expecting. You can use the following command to see which versions are currently available in the repository index:

apt policy terraform

apt policy terraform

There may be multiple package releases for a particular Terraform version if we need to publish an updated package for any reason. In that case, the subsequent releases will have an additional suffix, like 0.13.4-2. In these cases, the Terraform executable inside the package should be unchanged, but its metadata and other contents may be different.

You can select a specific version to install by including it in the apt install command line, as follows:

sudo apt install terraform=0.14.0

sudo apt install terraform=0.14.0

If your workflow requires using multiple versions of Terraform at the same time, for example when working through a gradual upgrade where not all of your configurations are upgraded yet, we recommend that you use the official release .zip files instead of the APT packages, so you can install multiple versions at once and then select which to use for each command you run.