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Fixed: Describe Affected Now Detects Vendored Component Changes

· 2 min read
Andriy Knysh
Andriy Knysh
Principal Architect @ Cloud Posse

Atmos now correctly detects file changes in components that use the source attribute for just-in-time vendoring. Previously, components vendored from remote sources were not properly tracked for affected detection.

The Problem​

When using Atmos vendoring with the source attribute to pull components from remote repositories, the atmos describe affected command was not detecting changes to those component files. This occurred because the affected detection logic required an explicit component field to determine which folder to monitor for changes.

Components configured like this were not being tracked:

components:
  terraform:
    vpc-remote:
      source:
        uri: "github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-vpc//."
        version: "4.0.0"
      vars:
        enabled: true

The Fix​

The affected detection now defaults to using the component name (the YAML key, e.g., vpc-remote) as the component folder path when no explicit component field is specified. This ensures that:

  • Components using source for vendoring are properly tracked
  • Components without explicit component field inheritance are detected
  • All component types (Terraform, Helmfile, Packer) benefit from this fix

What About Workdir?​

If you use provision.workdir with your vendored components, the detection still works correctly. The describe affected command tracks changes in the source files (components/terraform/<component>/), not the runtime workdir (.workdir/). Since .workdir/ is in .gitignore and created at runtime, it doesn't affect change detection.

Example​

Now when you modify vendored component files, atmos describe affected correctly identifies them:

# Stack configuration with source vendoring
components:
  terraform:
    vpc-production:
      source:
        uri: "github.com/cloudposse/terraform-aws-vpc//."
        version: "4.0.0"
        included_paths:
          - "**/*.tf"
      vars:
        environment: "production"

After running atmos vendor pull and making changes:

# Modify a vendored component file
echo "# update" >> components/terraform/vpc-production/main.tf

# Run describe affected
atmos describe affected --ref refs/heads/main

# Output now includes the vpc-production component
[
  {
    "component": "vpc-production",
    "stack": "prod-us-east-1",
    "affected": "component"
  }
]