Ibm Hashicorp ‘sunsets’ Terraform’s External Language Support

Going forward, erstwhile you tally IBM‘s Terraform Infrastructure arsenic Code (IaC) software, you will person 1 connection to constitute your configurations: nan HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL).

On Monday, HashiCorp, an IBM company, announced that it will nary longer support nan Terraform Cloud Development Kit (CDK aliases CDKTF). Although nan existing codification will stay disposable successful a GitHub archive, HashiCorp will nary longer support aliases update nan code, leaving it each but unusable for enterprises.

“Unfortunately, Terraform CDK did not find product-market fresh astatine scale. HashiCorp, an IBM Company, has chosen to attraction its investments connected Terraform halfway and its broader ecosystem,” a statement connected nan tract read.

The CDK itself is licensed nether nan Mozilla Public License (MPL), truthful users are free to fork nan package itself, IBM suggested.

The company, however, is encouraging users to usage HCL, which was developed by HashiCorp and licensed nether nan Mozilla Public License (MPL), primitively designed for nan software.

Terraform’s Rocky History

Originally released successful 2014 by HashiCorp, Terraform is package that allows administrators to automate nan deployment of IT infrastructure, either successful nan unreality aliases connected premises, done nan usage of scripts and a group of Terraform commands specified arsenic terraform init, terraform scheme and terraform apply. The output is rendered arsenic JSON.

Over time, Terraform has become nan astir celebrated package for automated IT deployment, particularly successful nan cloud autochthonal community.

In 2023, HashiCorp switched nan Terraform licence from unfastened root to a Business Source License, which spurred a user-based unfastened root fork of nan software, called OpenTofu, that was adopted by nan Linux Foundation and, later, by nan Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

In 2024, IBM announced it was acquiring HashiCorp and finalized nan acquisition earlier this year.

Terraform CDK Migration Plans

Despite a telephone to unfastened root nan CDK, IBM is encouraging existent users to adopt nan HCL if they are not already doing so.

“If you are not utilizing AWS CDK, we highly urge migrating to modular Terraform and HCL for semipermanent support and ecosystem alignment,” nan institution asserted.

Terraform users pinch .tf files created nether nan CDK tin person them to HCL pinch nan pursuing command:

Those utilizing CDTF connected Amazon Web Services infrastructure tin besides usage AWS’ ain CDK.

The Limits of IaC

Overall, nan Infrastructure arsenic Code personification guidelines appears to beryllium chafing from the limits of IaC.

As a result, galore replacement approaches to Terraform person popped up successful nan past fewer years, including Adam Jacob’s System Initiative and Formae from Platform Engineering Labs.

They constituent to really HCL has its limits, particularly for highly scalable environments. A declarative configuration language, HCL is constricted successful offering precocious programming constructs, and galore resulting workarounds person resulted successful obtuse code. Tooling is constricted arsenic well.

The advantage that nan CDKTF brought to users was that it allowed them to item deployment instructions done their ain favourite programming connection alternatively than HCL. CDKTF supported TypeScript, Python, C# and nan Go programming language.

This is besides nan attack that Terraform competitor Pulumi has staked out, namely nan expertise to proviso infrastructure successful any 1 of a number of programming languages.

Yet, location has besides been sizeable statement astir whether a general-purpose programming connection is amended than a domain-specific language. Terraform’s users are administrators, not programmers, arsenic critics person pointed out.

Community Reaction

Nonetheless, galore of those successful nan IaC organization took nan news hard. Kubernetes master David Flanagan noted that nan improvement kit has gotten complete 140,000 downloads per week for TypeScript alone, pinch akin numbers successful different connection communities.

So clearly, nan CDKTF is still highly utilized by nan community, he argued.

Fuck you, Hashicorp … an IBM Company. pic.twitter.com/h1EicnT3pL

— David Flanagan (@rawkode), Dec. 11, 2025

“You don’t termination a task pinch [an estimated] cardinal users each azygous period because cipher likes it aliases it doesn’t person a ‘market fit.’ You termination it because it is not expanding your profit margin, it is not trading endeavor licenses,” Flanagan said successful a short video.

To beryllium fair, IBM has a agelong history of buying unfastened source-based companies, and keeping nan unfastened root licensing intact, including nan Linux-based Red Hat, nan Cassandra-focused Datastax and, astir recently, nan Kafka-based Confluent. (There’s been nary word, however, connected whether IBM would revert nan Terraform license backmost to unfastened source.)

Flanagan went connected to statement that group are astir apt utilizing nan CDKTF because they require nan further programming capabilities. “It’s called Infrastructure arsenic Code, not Infrastructure arsenic JSON,” he quipped.

Site reliability technologist Liz Fong-Jones offered a much measured response.

“To beryllium much gentle astir this, HashiCorp has decided to extremity trying to compete pinch Pulumi pinch language-native APIs; they’re each successful connected HCL arsenic nan only measurement to activity pinch Terraform,” Fong-Jones wrote connected BlueSky.

Do We Need a Programming Language for IaC?

In fact, others deliberation this whitethorn not beryllium a bad idea.

Platform Engineering Labs’ Co-Founder and CEO Pavlo Baron thought nan IBM move made sense.

“IBM is historically bully astatine optimizing for nan target buyer. This is alternatively a motion that cipher connected nan correct broadside of nan rhythm wants to do full-blown programming. CDKs, and this includes nan attack Pulumi takes, are exclusively for developers. Developers usually don’t run infrastructure,” he wrote by email.

“Serious operations hap connected nan correct broadside of nan cycle, though. Thus, nan CDK is missing their target personification and addresses nan incorrect one. So I understand and support nan logic down this move.”

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