How to Import an AWS S3 Bucket Versioning into Terraform

Import AWS S3 Bucket Versioning with Terraback (recommended)

Terraback reverse-engineers your live infrastructure: it reads the Amazon S3 resource with read-only credentials, generates the HCL, and produces the exact import block. Two commands take you from a live AWS S3 Bucket Versioning 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_s3_bucket_versioning.assets
  id = "my-app-assets"
}

Example aws_s3_bucket_versioning configuration

Here is a realistic AWS S3 Bucket Versioning block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "aws_s3_bucket_versioning" "assets" {
  bucket = "my-app-assets"

  versioning_configuration {
    status = "Enabled"
  }
}

Gotchas when importing a AWS S3 Bucket Versioning

• The modern provider manages versioning as its own resource; it imports separately from aws_s3_bucket by the bucket name.
• Do not also set a versioning block inside aws_s3_bucket; the two will fight and produce a perpetual diff.
• status is Enabled, Suspended, or Disabled; once a bucket has ever been versioned you can only Suspend, never go back to Disabled.
• If you pass expected_bucket_owner the import ID becomes bucket,account-id (comma-separated, no spaces).

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the aws_s3_bucket_versioning block by hand, then run terraform import aws_s3_bucket_versioning.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