Stage 6: Optimize for DRY Configuration

As developers navigate the complexities of managing multiple environments, root modules, and accounts or organizations, the focus shifts from merely defining infrastructure as code to the overarching challenge of maintaining these expansive configurations efficiently.

1. With numerous environments, root modules, and accounts or organizations, the challenge shifts from defining infrastructure as code to maintaining the extensive configuration of parameters that get passed to Terraform.
2. In an effort to manage repetitive configurations, developers resort to using symlinks or other methods to link common files across projects, seeking to reduce redundancy.
3. Code Generation is adopted to overcome perceived limitations of Terraform (when, in fact it's often a flaw in the architecture of the project).

New Problems

1. For every new application developed, the automatic response is to create bespoke root modules for specific needs, despite reusing child modules, raising the question of why a new root module is necessary for each application in the first place.
2. As the number of root modules grows, the Terraform state gets divided by component. Managing these inter-component dependencies falls outside Terraform's capabilities and needs to be solved in another way.
3. The adoption of code generation tools to address Terraform's perceived limitations (e.g., inability to iterate over providers](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/19932#issuecomment-1817043906)) that often can mask underlying architectural issues as well as make automated testing complicated.

Realization

Now with all these new configuration files and additional parameters to run Terraform, developers invest more time in scripting and automation to manage these configurations.

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