How to Import an Google Container Registry into Terraform

Import Google Container Registry with Terraback (recommended)

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

terraback scan all gcp --project my-gcp-project

terraback gcp 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 = google_container_registry.registry
  id = "my-project"
}

Example google_container_registry configuration

Here is a realistic Google Container Registry block. Terraback generates a fuller version from your actual resource attributes; this is a minimal, valid starting point.

resource "google_container_registry" "registry" {
  location = "US"
}

Gotchas when importing a Google Container Registry

• This resource does not create a registry directly; it provisions and manages the backing Cloud Storage bucket (for example artifacts.my-project.appspot.com) that GCR uses.
• location is the GCR multi-region (US, EU, or ASIA) and is immutable; it determines the bucket name and cannot be changed in place.
• Container Registry is deprecated by Google in favor of Artifact Registry; for new work use google_artifact_registry_repository instead.
• Pushing and pulling images is controlled by IAM on the storage bucket, which is managed separately from this resource.

Doing it manually with terraform import

The native approach is to write the google_container_registry block by hand, then run terraform import google_container_registry.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 Google Cloud resources