Remote Version Check prevents changing backend to “local” when Terraform point-releases mismatch

[pkolyvas]

Summary

If I have a remote workspace configured with a specific version of Terraform, ex. 0.14.3, and I am trying to move from remote execution back to local execution, the Remote Version Check won’t let me do so, even if the upgrade is a minor version.

Terraform Version

0.14.4
0.15-dev

Terraform Configuration Files

This issue centers around Terraform’s behaviour when you decide to remove the remote backend. In other words reconfiguring

terraform {
#    backend “remote” {
#      organization = “my_org”
#       workspaces = {
#            name = “my_workspace”
#       }
      required_providers = {
           source = “hashicorp/random”
      }
}

# Anything else below doesn’t matter
resource “random_pet” “terraform” {
     ...
}

Actual Behavior

Remote version check indicates that because my workspace is running 0.14.3 and my local version is 0.14.4 I cannot reconfigure the backend from remote to local.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Comment or remove the remote backend from your Terraform configuration
2. terraform init

Additional Context

I tested the behaviour against the HEAD of the main branch and the issue persists so I filed this as @alisdair suggested. It doesn’t strike me as high priority but it was important to document.

Workarounds

A couple of possible workarounds if you’ve arrived here with the same issue:

1. The easy path is to modify your workspace settings to match the version of Terraform you’re running. This should be done carefully depending on the gap or discrepancy between the workspaces, but largely should be ok as terraform init shouldn’t touch the state file.
2. Use something like TFSwitch to quickly change to your local version of Terraform to a version of Terraform matching the remote workspace and move along home.

References

• cli: Fix double check of remote workspace version #27498

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