Preserve workspace in custom workflow

[andyshinn]

I think this might be related to #935 (or maybe the feature request of the issue). Also linking #661 where I first encountered this but didn't fully understand what was happening.

I would like to propose a feature request to preserve the workspace for custom workflows. Currently, in each stage of a custom workflow I do:

version: 3
projects:
  - name: staging
    dir: terraform
    workspace: staging
    workflow: staging
workflows:
  staging:
    plan:
      steps:
      - env:
          name: TF_WORKSPACE
          command: 'echo "$WORKSPACE"'
      - init
      - plan:
          extra_args: ["-var-file", "vars/staging.tfvars"]

Without the added env step the workspace in the project is ignored. I would expect that TF_WORKSPACE so it is available to all steps. It is also something I miss when creating new projects because the failures at init are not apparent that the workspace is missing.

Then, the steps become a more concise:

version: 3
projects:
  - name: staging
    dir: terraform
    workspace: staging
    workflow: staging
workflows:
  staging:
    plan:
      steps:
      - init
      - plan:
          extra_args: ["-var-file", "vars/staging.tfvars"]

I'm also going to link #659 as it is a little related in that it would allow easier sharing of workflows where the vars file in this case always matches the workspace:

version: 3
projects:
  - name: staging
    dir: terraform
    workspace: staging
    workflow: environments
  - name: production
    dir: terraform
    workspace: production
    workflow: environments
workflows:
  environments:
    plan:
      steps:
      - init
      - plan:
          extra_args: ["-var-file", "vars/${TF_WORKSPACE}.tfvars"]

A low-priority thing for sure (manually setting TF_WORKSPACE to WORKSPACE is a workaround). But I think the UX around this could be improved.

[mwarkentin]

Should this be closed?