Hey folks! We have a question on workshop: The standard issue with IaC - if I have this in a GitOps setup where I have the whole project defined and state that I use bucket X for my state file, how will it be applied in the first time unless I do staged apply if that makes it more clear I remember we did a workshop and we had answer but cannot find a good resource - any help?

Not sure I get the question. Are you asking how the bucket to hold the state files will be created initially? In that case, you'll have to create the bucket ahead of time, similar to how you have to create an AWS account and set it up so that your GitOps workflows can access and deploy into it.

I also have the same understanding: state file is either stored in Pulumi cloud or at self managed location. If it's self managed (like S3 bucket) then it needs to be bootstrapped along with the (for eg) AWS account where you also create the bucket with policy, versioning, etc. Feed that location to Pulumi where it will create and maintain the state file. https://www.pulumi.com/docs/concepts/state/