DEV Community

Abraham Naiborhu
Abraham Naiborhu

Posted on

Installing Terraform on macOS with Homebrew and Fixing Zsh Autocomplete Error

#terraform #beginners

After passing Google Professional Cloud Architect, I started learning Terraform to turn cloud architecture knowledge into reproducible Infrastructure as Code.

This is my first Terraform learning note with a simple goal of

  • install Terraform on macOS
  • verify that it works
  • enable autocomplete
  • document one error I encountered during setup

Requirements

For this setup, I used Homebrew.
If you do not have Homebrew installed yet, you can install it from:
https://brew.sh/

What is Homebrew?

Small info, Homebrew is a package manager for macOS and Linux. It helps install, update, and manage developer tools directly from the terminal.

Reference: This note is based on HashiCorp’s official Terraform installation guide. I rewrote the steps in my own words as part of my personal Terraform learning documentation.

Install Terraform on macOS

First, add HashiCorp’s official Homebrew tap.

brew tap hashicorp/tap
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Verify the Installation

After installation, check whether Terraform is available.

terraform --version
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

You can also list Terraform’s available commands.

terraform --help
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

To inspect a specific command, add -help. For example:

terraform plan -help
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Enable Terraform Autocomplete

Because I am using Zsh on macOS, I first made sure that the Zsh configuration file exists.

touch ~/.zshrc
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Or if you are not too sure, go check it with

ls -la .zshrc
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

It will output the path to that file.

Then I installed Terraform autocomplete.

terraform -install-autocomplete
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

After installing autocomplete, restart the shell or reload the Zsh configuration.

source ~/.zshrc
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

The Error

After running terraform -install-autocomplete, I encountered this error when opening a new terminal window:

complete:13: command not found: compdef
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Why This Happened

Terraform autocomplete uses shell completion.

In my case, Zsh’s completion system was not properly initialized before Terraform’s autocomplete command was loaded.

Because of that, the terminal could not recognize compdef.

The Fix

Open the Zsh configuration file.

nano ~/.zshrc
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Then make sure the Zsh completion system is initialized before the Terraform autocomplete line.

My configuration looked like this:

# Initialize Zsh completion system
autoload -Uz compinit && compinit

# Initialize Bash completion compatibility
autoload -U +X bashcompinit && bashcompinit

# Terraform CLI autocomplete
complete -o nospace -C /opt/homebrew/bin/terraform terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Important note: the Terraform path may be different depending on your Mac.

To check your Terraform path, run:

which terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

For Apple Silicon Macs, it is commonly:

/opt/homebrew/bin/terraform
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Use the path returned by which terraform.

Restart the Shell

After updating .zshrc, reload it:

source ~/.zshrc
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Test Autocomplete

Type this without pressing Enter:

terraform provi
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Then press tab. The result should usually be

terraform providers
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

What I Learned

This was a small setup issue, but it reminded me of an important Infrastructure as Code principle:

Tooling setup matters.

This is only the first step. Next, I will start learning Terraform providers, resources, variables, outputs, and how Terraform works with Google Cloud.

Top comments (0)