aws_resource_missing_tags errors when tags are provided via default_tags mechanism

[mbazalik]

Aws have provided a new way of providing default tags through aws provider.

Right now those are ignored by aws_resource_missing_tags rule.

Would it be for the rule not to error if the tags are present in the provider?

Thank you

[wata727]

Yes, this rule doesn't currently support the default tags.
https://www.hashicorp.com/blog/default-tags-in-the-terraform-aws-provider

On the other hand, this rule is just for manually solving the problem that should be realized with the default tags, and I think that this rule is no longer necessary. What do you think?

[rquadling]

We've just experienced this today. Our solution is to remove the rule from our .tflint.hcl. The reasoning for this is as follows (and may well have been explained already).

Our use case of this rule was to ensure that the developer had correctly tagged all the resources that could support tags.

This includes root resources as well as resources in modules.

This resulted in passing a block of tags around and ensuring correct .tf code for the tags (sometimes it is tags = map(string), sometimes it is a tag {} block per tag).

By moving the tags to the provider, our requirement has been met. All resources, regardless of how the tags are defined on the resource WILL get the tags defined in the provider.

This reduces all the merge(var.base_tags, {resource_specific_tag = "some specific value"} as well as the extra work for the pipelines to ensure all the tags exist.

And so, with all of that, there's no further use case for us of this rule.

It did involve a fair amount of work (several hundred resources all need to be stripped of their merge and just the resource specific tags left behind), but certainly well worth the effort.