Provider warning for missing api_key, api_user, and user_name even when using NAMECHEAP_* environment variables

[matei-radu]

Terraform Version

Terraform v1.4.5
on linux_amd64
+ provider registry.terraform.io/namecheap/namecheap v2.1.0

Namecheap provider version

namecheap/namecheap v2.1.0

Affected Resource(s)

The namecheap Terraform provider.

Terraform Configuration Files

Irrelevant for this report.

Debug Output

Irrelevant for this report.

Expected Behavior

The documentation, under Argument Reference, mentions that the provider arguments can be set via environment variables. This is, in fact, preferred as you shouldn't hard-code sensitive data in your Terraform configuration.

Thus, I expected to be able to declare an empty namecheap provider without any warnings:

provider namecheap {}

Actual Behavior

My IDE warns me that api_key, api_user, and user_name are required and missing:

Luckily, this is only a warning, because supplying the appropriate NAMECHEAP_* environment variables works as expected.

Steps to Reproduce

Given a Terraform config:

1. Add namecheap version 2.1.0 as a required provider

terraform {
  required_providers {
    # Other provider data...
    
    namecheap = {
      source = "namecheap/namecheap"
      version = "2.1.0"
    }
  }
}

2. Create a namecheap provider with no arguments:

provider namecheap {}

3. Depending on the capabilities of your IDE, you should have a warning of sorts pop up. For reference, I'm using IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate with the official Terraform plugin.

Important Factoids

Looking at the provider source, the properties that are logically required are also programmatically flagged with Required: true, while also having a DefaultFunc pointing to the respective environment variable.

If a property has a default, why should it be required? Or if it is required, then what is the purpose of a default value?

I would recommend Replacing the Required: true with Optional: true because that is what these properties are. For inspiration, the AWS provider does the same. They don't use DefaultFunc but rather a configure function to ensure that the configuration is always complete, however the end result is the same.

[vetal2409]

@matei-radu Thanks for reporting! We will take it to work!