autoplan when modified all sub-levels of a folder

[marceloboeira]

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Overview of the Issue

I'd like to ensure that Atlantis runs the plan automatically whenever there are changes to any level of the modules folder.

Modules are structured with a deep tree:

modules
├── aws
│   └── amazonmq
│       └── rabbitmq
│           └── broker
├── consul
│   ├── node
│   └── service
└── vault
    ├── backend
    ├── generic
    ├── roles

A simple setup like this, only serves the first level:

 autoplan:
      when_modified: [
        "*.tf*",
        "modules/**/*.tf",
 ...

Demanding us to declare it for every new level:

 autoplan:
      when_modified: [
        "*.tf*",
        "modules/**/*.tf",
        "modules/**/**/*.tf",
        "modules/**/**/**/*.tf",
        "modules/**/**/**/**/*.tf",
...

Is there an already supported way of declaring that?

Something like:

        "modules/***.tf", # similar recursive syntax

Would express what I want, but do not seem to work either.

[Fabianoshz]

Looks like this could be the relevant code to this issue:

atlantis/server/events/project_finder.go

Lines 182 to 199 in c800f70

	for _, wm := range project.Autoplan.WhenModified {
	wm = strings.TrimSpace(wm)
	// An exclusion uses a '!' at the beginning. If it's there, we need
	// to remove it, then add in the project path, then add it back.
	exclusion := false
	if wm != "" && wm[0] == '!' {
	wm = wm[1:]
	exclusion = true
	}
	// Prepend project dir to when modified patterns because the patterns
	// are relative to the project dirs but our list of modified files is
	// relative to the repo root.
	wmRelPath := filepath.Join(project.Dir, wm)
	if exclusion {
	wmRelPath = "!" + wmRelPath
	}
	whenModifiedRelToRepoRoot = append(whenModifiedRelToRepoRoot, wmRelPath)

The thing is, there is a join in this check:

// Prepend project dir to when modified patterns because the patterns 
// are relative to the project dirs but our list of modified files is 
// relative to the repo root. 
wmRelPath := filepath.Join(project.Dir, wm) 

So the autoplan.when_modified is relative to the dir no the root directory. To make it clear, consider you have this folder structure:

standard/
- main.tf
standard-2/
- main.tf
standard-3/
 standard-4/
  standard-5/
   - main.tf

Also consider you're updating the standard-5/main.tf file.

This atlantis.yaml would not update the standard folder because it would check for "standard/standard-3/**/*.tf" from the root:

version: 3
projects:
- name: test
  dir: standard
  autoplan:
    when_modified: ["standard-3/**/*.tf"]
    enabled: true

This atlantis.yaml would update the standard folder because it would check for "standard-3/**/*.tf" from the root:

version: 3
projects:
- name: test
  dir: standard
  autoplan:
    when_modified: ["../standard-3/**/*.tf"]
    enabled: true

The documentation also states this: https://www.runatlantis.io/docs/repo-level-atlantis-yaml.html#configuring-planning

The paths are relative to the project's directory.

IMHO there's no need for this to be a relative path, it actually creates confusion, but since some people might be using this config as relative already I see no reason to change that and also is not a bug and is documented.