How to Import an AWS ECR Lifecycle Policy into Terraform

Import AWS ECR Lifecycle Policy with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon ECR resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS ECR Lifecycle Policy to managed Terraform.

terraback scan all aws --region us-east-1

terraback aws import --method bulk

The Terraform import block

Terraback emits a Terraform 1.5+ import block like the one below. Because the block lives in your configuration, the import is reviewable in a pull request and repeatable across environments.

import {
  to = aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy.api
  id = "app/api"
}

Example aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy configuration

Here is a realistic AWS ECR Lifecycle Policy block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy" "api" {
  repository = "app/api"

  policy = jsonencode({
    rules = [{
      rulePriority = 1
      description  = "Keep last 30 images"
      selection = {
        tagStatus   = "any"
        countType   = "imageCountMoreThan"
        countNumber = 30
      }
      action = { type = "expire" }
    }]
  })
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS ECR Lifecycle Policy

• Import by the repository name, not an ARN; a repository has at most one lifecycle policy so the repo name uniquely identifies it.
• This is a sub-resource of aws_ecr_repository; importing the repository does not bring its lifecycle policy along, you import it separately.
• The policy is a JSON document; expect a diff if your jsonencode block does not match AWS key ordering and whitespace exactly.
• Lifecycle rules permanently delete images when they fire; review countNumber and tagStatus carefully before applying after import.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy block by hand, then run terraform import aws_ecr_lifecycle_policy.example <import-id> for every resource, one at a time. That works for a handful of resources, but it does not scale: you author all the HCL yourself and repeat the command for each item. Terraback generates the HCL and the import blocks for your whole account in one pass.

Import other AWS resources