Custom Workflow Overrides Terraform Binary

[Joe-Bresee]

Hey Atlantis community,
I'm wondering if anyone can help with a problem I'm facing with my atlantis deployment, regarding the feature for dynamic terraform versioning that downloads to /bin/terraform.

I am deploying with the helm chart, and in values.yaml, I have:

repoConfig: | --- repos: - id: /.*/ workflow: default apply_requirements: ["approved"] workflows: default: plan: steps: - run: terraform init -reconfigure - run: command: terraform plan output: strip_refreshing metrics: prometheus: endpoint: /metrics

My issue is, it seems that by overriding the terraform command in this custom workflow, I am always running terraform with what's in PATH: the default terraform version. However, PATH doesn't have the atlantis-data-dir/bin location. Additionally, these terraform binaries are named by their version, so cannot be run with just terraform if I add the atlantis data dir to PATH.
It seems that by default, atlantis will run <atlantis-data-dir>/bin/terraform<version> init or <atlantis-data-dir>/bin/terraform<version> plan. I want to keep this ability, while being able to keep my custom workflow. Any advice, thoughts, etc. are much appreciated. Thanks

[dosubot[bot]]

Hi @Joe-Bresee! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the atlantis team.

When you override the terraform command in a custom workflow, Atlantis uses the terraform binary found in PATH, not the dynamically downloaded version. By default, Atlantis selects the correct binary by running it directly from its full path (like <atlantis-data-dir>/bin/terraform<version>), but custom run steps bypass this logic and just call terraform, which resolves to whatever is in PATH see docs.

To keep dynamic terraform version selection in your custom workflow, use the environment variable ATLANTIS_TERRAFORM_BIN, which Atlantis sets to the full path of the correct terraform binary. Update your workflow steps to use this variable, for example:

workflows:
  default:
    plan:
      steps:
        - run: $ATLANTIS_TERRAFORM_BIN init -reconfigure
        - run:
            command: $ATLANTIS_TERRAFORM_BIN plan
            output: strip_refreshing

This ensures your custom steps always use the right terraform version, matching Atlantis’s built-in behavior reference. You can also use ATLANTIS_TERRAFORM_VERSION if you need to construct the binary path yourself, but ATLANTIS_TERRAFORM_BIN is the most direct and robust way.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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