Issue #5808 aws_iam_policy does not have a description attribute

[saravanan30erd]

Fixes #5808

Changes proposed in this pull request:

• Change 1
  added default value to description attribute.

Output from acceptance testing:

$ make testacc TEST=./aws TESTARGS='-run=TestAWSPolicy_checkDescription'
==> Checking that code complies with gofmt requirements...
TF_ACC=1 go test ./aws -v -run=TestAWSPolicy_checkDescription -timeout 120m
=== RUN   TestAWSPolicy_checkDescription
--- PASS: TestAWSPolicy_checkDescription (28.46s)
PASS
ok  	github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/aws	28.503s
...

[bflad]

Hi @saravanan30erd 👋 Thanks for submitting this.

Changing the attribute default in this manner is a breaking change for existing Terraform configurations (even with a state migration) and while it accomplishes the goal of having d.Set("description", ...) always called (since it will not be returned as nil by default from the API), its not necessarily the correct way to accomplish this.

This is the problematic line, which dates back 3 years:

https://github.com/terraform-providers/terraform-provider-aws/blob/7be15b7d6273e2badbd0a7d2453eee452bcecd7c/aws/resource_aws_iam_policy.go#L281

My best guess is that this was written before d.Set() was setup to handle pointers for scalar types (e.g. *string) and that the other fields were fine without that check because they are more or less "required" from a service standpoint. Nowadays, we can pass a *string directly into d.Set() and it'll set "" in the state if its an empty string.

Instead of making the broader changes here, I would suggest simply trying to just remove that if policy.Description != nil line and adding a check to an existing acceptance test like this (where description isn't being set in test configuration):

resource.TestCheckResourceAttr("aws_iam_policy.policy", "description", ""),

Theoretically, the above check should fail on master for test configurations missing that argument.

[saravanan30erd]

@bflad thanks, done 👍
I referred how description handled in some other resources and followed the same.
But it will affect the existing configurations as you said, I ll note it.

[bflad]

🎉 Glad this worked out and thanks for fixing this! 🚀

2 tests passed (all tests)
--- PASS: TestAWSPolicy_invalidJson (0.56s)
--- PASS: TestAWSPolicy_namePrefix (6.72s)

[bflad]

This has been released in version 1.36.0 of the AWS provider. Please see the Terraform documentation on provider versioning or reach out if you need any assistance upgrading.

[ghost]

I'm going to lock this issue because it has been closed for 30 days ⏳. This helps our maintainers find and focus on the active issues.

If you feel this issue should be reopened, we encourage creating a new issue linking back to this one for added context. Thanks!