In Terraform, what does the term 'state' refer to?

In Terraform, the term 'state' specifically refers to how Terraform maintains a mapping of the resources it manages to your actual infrastructure. This state file acts as a single source of truth for the infrastructure, storing the current state of your resources, including their metadata and the values assigned to them. When you run operations, Terraform compares the desired configuration defined in your Terraform files against this state to determine what actions to take to align the real-world infrastructure with your defined configuration.

Maintaining this state allows Terraform to perform efficient planning and resource management. It ensures that Terraform can track configuration changes over time, allowing it to understand what resources are already in place and what needs to be created, updated, or destroyed.

The other options do not accurately describe what 'state' refers to in Terraform. The current configuration of resources is more about the defined setup in the code rather than the tracked state. The current status of a running application is not directly related to Terraform's state file, which focuses specifically on the infrastructure's managed resources. Finally, the history of applied changes pertains to previous states and does not represent the current mapping of existing resources. Thus, the emphasis on the mapping of resources to your infrastructure is what makes this answer correct.