# terraform v1.17.0-alpha20260812

- Product: terraform (https://whatsnew.fyi/product/terraform)
- Vendor: terraform
- Date: 2026-08-12
- Version: v1.17.0-alpha20260812
- Original notes: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/releases/tag/v1.17.0-alpha20260812
- Permalink: https://whatsnew.fyi/product/terraform/releases/v1.17.0-alpha20260812
- Labels: Pre-release

What's New is an index, not a publisher: every entry below links to the vendor's own release notes, which are the authoritative source. Entries are labelled where they are hand-curated sample data, pre-releases, or drawn from a secondary source such as a developer blog.

Reuse: the summaries, labels and curation here are © What's New. Quote freely with attribution and a link back; wholesale republication of the corpus is not permitted — terms: https://whatsnew.fyi/terms. The vendors' own release notes remain their publishers'.

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- **changed** — Enrich log messages in terraform init with provider versions
- **fixed** — Fix pow and log functions to no longer panic when result is not a number
- **fixed** — Terraform will now use and display diagnostics raised when renewing an ephemeral resource
- **added** — JSON output from terraform version now includes a new format_version field

##### 1.17.0-alpha20260812 (August 12, 2026)


ENHANCEMENTS:

* command/init: Enrich log messages with provider versions ([#38918](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/38918))


BUG FIXES:

* funcs: pow and log no longer panic when result is not a number ([#38912](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/38912))

* ephemeral: Terraform will now use and display diagnostics raised when _renewing_ an ephemeral resource. This may cause warnings to appear that previously were lost. We expect that any error diagnostics that were previously lost would have caused confusing downstream errors, so we do not anticipate this change to be breaking. ([#38989](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/38989))


NOTES:

* version: JSON output now includes a new `format_version` field, which will enable safer future changes of the command's JSON output format. It is assumed existing tooling ignores unknown fields and therefore this change should not be breaking in itself but we advice consumers to pay attention to `format_version` in future releases and/or use latest version of hashicorp/terraform-json & hashicorp/terraform-exec which does. ([#38930](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/issues/38930))


EXPERIMENTS:

Experiments are only enabled in alpha releases of Terraform CLI. The following features are not yet available in stable releases.

- The experimental "deferred actions" feature, enabled by passing the `-allow-deferral` option to `terraform plan`, permits `count` and `for_each` arguments in `module`, `resource`, and `data` blocks to have unknown values and allows providers to react more flexibly to unknown values.
- `terraform test cleanup`: The experimental `test cleanup` command. In experimental builds of Terraform, a manifest file and state files for each failed cleanup operation during test operations are saved within the `.terraform` local directory. The `test cleanup` command will attempt to clean up the local state files left behind automatically, without requiring manual intervention.
- `terraform test`: `backend` blocks and `skip_cleanup` attributes:
  - Test authors can now specify `backend` blocks within `run` blocks in Terraform Test files. Run blocks with `backend` blocks will load state from the specified backend instead of starting from empty state on every execution. This allows test authors to keep long-running test infrastructure alive between test operations, saving time during regular test operations.
  - Test authors can now specify `skip_cleanup` attributes within test files and within run blocks. The `skip_cleanup` attribute tells `terraform test` not to clean up state files produced by run blocks with this attribute set to true. The state files for affected run blocks will be written to disk within the `.terraform` directory, where they can then be cleaned up manually using the also experimental `terraform test cleanup` command.
- `terraform query`: The experimental `-policies` flag permits specifying one or more policy set directory paths to evaluate policies against resources discovered by list blocks during a query operation.

##### Previous Releases

For information on prior major and minor releases, refer to their changelogs:

- [v1.16](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.16/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.15](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.15/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.14](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.14/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.13](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.13/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.12](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.12/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.11](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.11/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.10](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.10/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.9](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.9/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.8](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.8/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.7](https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform/blob/v1.7/CHANGELOG.md)
- [v1.6](https://github.com/hashicorp

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