Platform & DevOps·Infrastructure described in a file
the state bucket and the pipeline's own permissions had to exist before the tool that creates everything could run once.
Infrastructure bootstrapping
Also calledbootstrap problem, chicken and egg infrastructure
The problem that the infrastructure managing your infrastructure cannot manage itself into existence. Something — a human with elevated credentials, a small hand-run configuration — has to create the state backend, the identity and the pipeline before anything is automated. It is worth naming because it is the one hand-made corner of an otherwise codified estate, and it is exactly the corner nobody documents until a disaster recovery exercise needs it.