Automation API concepts & terminology

Automation API lets you define a Pulumi program as a function within your codebase rather than in a separate project and use methods to get and set configuration parameters programmatically.

The package can be used for a number of use cases:

Driving pulumi deployments within CI/CD workflows
Integration testing
Multi-stage deployments such as blue-green deployment patterns
Deployments involving application code like database migrations
Building higher level tools, custom CLIs over Pulumi, etc.
Using Pulumi behind a REST or GRPC API
Debugging Pulumi programs (by using a single main entrypoint with “inline” programs)

Workspace

To enable a broad range of runtime customization the API defines a Workspace interface. A Workspace is the execution context containing a single Pulumi project, a program, and multiple stacks. Workspaces are used to manage the execution environment, providing various utilities such as plugin installation, environment configuration ($PULUMI_HOME), and creation, deletion, and listing of Stacks.

LocalWorkspace

The LocalWorkspace class is the default implementation of Workspace. This implementation relies on Pulumi.yaml and Pulumi.[stack].yaml as the intermediate format for Project and Stack settings. Modifying ProjectSettings will alter the Workspace Pulumi.yaml file, and setting config on a Stack will modify the Pulumi.[stack].yaml file. This is identical to the behavior of Pulumi CLI driven workspaces.

RemoteWorkspace

The RemoteWorkspace class represents a workspace for running Pulumi operations remotely via Pulumi Deployments where the program is located in a remote Git repository.

Stack

The Stack class represents an isolated, independently configurable instance of a Pulumi program. Stack exposes methods for the full pulumi lifecycle (up/preview/refresh/destroy), as well as managing configuration. Multiple Stacks are commonly used to denote different phases of development (such as development, staging and production) or feature branches (such as feature-x-dev, jane-feature-x-dev). You can learn more about stacks in the intro docs.

RemoteStack

The RemoteStack class represents an isolated, independently configurable instance of a Pulumi program. RemoteStack exposes methods for the full pulumi lifecycle (up/preview/refresh/destroy) for running these remotely from a remote workspace.

Local Program

A local program is a traditional Pulumi CLI-driven program with its own directory, a Pulumi.yaml file, along with a file that defines the Pulumi program. Automation API can be used to drive these programs, as well as the CLI.

Inline Program

Unlike traditional Pulumi programs, inline programs don’t require a separate package on disk, with its own file and a Pulumi.yaml. Inline programs are functions that can be authored in the same file as your Automation API program or be imported from another package.