Why does terraform-update-variable default to skipping CI?

[yorinasub17]

Specifically, the --skip-ci-flag defaults to [skip ci], causing the underlying pipeline to be skipped. What is the intended flow with this script?

[yorinasub17]

This script predates the ecs-deploy-runner pipeline scripts, and thus the script defaults are currently optimized for and adapted to a workflow that predates the pipeline scripts. In this flow, the intended workflow for deploying a new image version was:

• Build a new image
• Use terraform-update-variable to update the image tag to the new version in the relevant terragrunt.hcl script
• Run terragrunt apply
• Push and commit the code, without running the pipeline since the code is already deployed in a manual terragrunt apply call.

With ecs-deploy-runner, the intention is to run the script with --skip-ci-flag "" so that the skip ci flag is not injected into the commit and the main infrastructure-live pipeline is run. Note that if you are using the template from the Reference Architecture, this should already be included in the args when calling the terraform-update-variable script: https://github.com/gruntwork-io/terraform-aws-service-catalog/blob/master/examples/for-production/infrastructure-live/_ci/app-templates/scripts/deploy-docker-image.sh#L50