What file is typically used to specify multiple environments in Terraform?

The file that is commonly used to specify multiple environments in Terraform is terraform.tfvars. This file allows you to define variable values that can be passed to your Terraform configuration. When managing multiple environments, it is effective to use different tfvars files for each environment, such as dev.tfvars, prod.tfvars, etc. This approach helps streamline the process of deploying infrastructure by ensuring that each environment can have its own specific configurations, settings, and variable values.

Using terraform.tfvars makes it easy to manage these configurations since Terraform automatically loads the variables defined in this file when running commands. This eliminates the need for providing values explicitly on the command line or modifying configuration files directly, allowing for a cleaner separation of environment-specific settings.

While other file options exist, such as .netvars, .env, and .config, they do not serve the same primary function of directly storing environment-specific variable values in a standard and recognized manner as terraform.tfvars does in Terraform usage. This is why terraform.tfvars is the preferred choice for managing multiple environments effectively.