I m using the pulumi automation api in a go cli tool and rea

Question

I m using the pulumi automation api in a go cli tool and really enjoying it so far It s still a bit fuzzy to me what the requirements dependencies are for the automation api though Specifically is the pulumi cli a hard dependency to use the automation api Reason I ask is because I would love for users to be able to install the binary and use it as is while minimizing prerequisites dependencies This would also simplify containerizing the app This is also ties into another question I have about pulumi s state management Is there a way to have state management completely self contained in a Go binary i e Is it possible pulumi to create an s3 bucket to use for state storage and then proceed to provision a stack that uses that bucket as a state backend Or is this a chicken before the egg problem Thanks

worried-rain-74420 · Answer

Hi Lucas Very glad to hear you re enjoying it gt Specifically is the pulumi cli a hard dependency to use the automation api Yes the Pulumi CLI is a hard requirement for AutoAPI We re exploring long term approaches to removing this requirement but it s definitely a ways off

worried-rain-74420 · Answer

gt Is there a way to have state management completely self contained in a Go binary i e Is it possible pulumi to create an s3 bucket to use for state storage and then proceed to provision a stack that uses that bucket as a state backend Hmm my answer is yes and no sweat smile I would tackle this by creating a temporary directory ` tmp ` and using the filestate backend to write to that directory From there you can provision the stack then delete the tmp directory

worried-rain-74420 · Answer

Unfortunately you can t statelessly create an S3 bucket for example You have to store the state somewhere If you can write to a temp directory you can always wipe the directory when you re done

worried-rain-74420 · Answer

Just today I did something similar in a GitHub Action I also wanted emphemeral state storage so I could run some performance tests ```aws s3 mb ``` and when I was done ```aws s3 rb force ``` In this case nothing about what I m doing is self contained I m invoking bash to run the aws command Of course you could use the AWS API from your Go program if you wanted But unfortunately I don t think there s a way to statelessly bootstrap your environment

bitter-energy-6777 · Answer

Thanks Robbie I ve only been using the managed pulumi service backend which is very convenient but would like to offer more flexible self managed solutions to users for state storage I like the idea of using the file backend to create the s3 bucket thanks I would likely use the AWS SDK in my program to create the bucket using the file state backend to be as self contained as possible I looked through the docs and some pulumi issues but couldn t find the syntax for using the auto api to point to an s3 backend Do you have any references you could point me to

worried-rain-74420 · Answer

Sure Glad to help slightly smiling face I think you want and when you initialize the Project you can use the field to provide the path to the tmp directory