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Hey!
I'm playing around with the Automation API, and from my understanding you require a local file system to create the LocalWorkspace, and set the `workDir` ?
I get that you probably need a local file system to install the plugins etc into, but shouldn't we be able to store the stack configurations elsewhere, e.g. together with the state in a state backend?

My understanding is when you use the Automation API, it’s still something like the Pulumi CLI under the hood, so it still expects the same ecosystem around it. Pulumi.yaml and a working dir and such.

If the question question is "Couldn't it not work that way?" ... yes, perhaps if there are no theoretical limits, :shrug: , but it doesn't :slightly_smiling_face:

It would be wonderful if there were no theoretical limits! :relieved: :joy:

I was mostly wondering if I was missing something, or if there was a way to somehow get the stack configurations created elsewhere

My idea stems from thinking about have a centralized location for several instances of the same application, and the idea then was to use the Postgresql-state backend, mostly as a fun project

It isn't really a real use-case, a theoretical one more like it

I was so busy wonder if I could, that I didn't stop to think if I should :wink:

I don't think you are missing anything. It would probably be easiest to wrap some kind of temp dir around things to make it work as is, but taht would still need a writable file system.

Someone in here might know more than me though.

&gt; I was mostly wondering if I was missing something, or if there was a way to somehow get the stack configurations created elsewhere
You can use `pulumi stack select $MY_STACK &amp;&amp; pulumi config refresh` to get the latest _deployed_ configuration for your stack.

This functionality is also wrapped/exposed by the Automation API: <https://github.com/pulumi/pulumi/blob/master/sdk/nodejs/automation/localWorkspace.ts#L792>

If you want to share configurations without deploying them, as far as I'm aware you'll need to use a separate system (Git or some data store, I've used the AWS SSM Parameter Store or secret managers for this purpose, but anywhere you can store YAML- or JSON-like objects will do).

Hmm, interesting so it seems plausible to kind of just ignore the local stack-files, and always fetch what is deployed. :thinking_face: