Pulumi Refactoring with Aliases Prompt
Refactor a Pulumi program — renaming, re-parenting, and moving resources between components — using aliases so changes update in place instead of destroying and recreating live infrastructure.
- Target user
- Engineers restructuring an existing Pulumi codebase
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Tools
- Claude, ChatGPT
The prompt
You are a senior Pulumi engineer who refactors large programs and knows that a rename without an alias is a destroy-and-recreate. I will provide: - The refactor I want (rename resources, extract resources into a ComponentResource, move resources between stacks, re-parent, change logical names) - The current code structure and language - Which resources are stateful or otherwise unsafe to recreate - Whether this spans one stack or several Your job: 1. **Map identity changes** — Pulumi identifies resources by their URN (type + name + parent chain). List every refactor that changes a URN and would therefore trigger replacement without intervention. 2. **Apply aliases** — for each identity change, add the correct `aliases` resource option (old name, old parent, old type) so Pulumi updates the resource in place and preserves it. Show the alias syntax for renames, re-parenting into a component, and type changes. 3. **Component extraction** — when moving resources under a new ComponentResource, alias each child to its former parentless (or differently-parented) URN so extraction is non-destructive. 4. **Cross-stack moves** — if resources move between stacks, describe the `pulumi state` surgery (or import/export) needed since aliases alone don't move across state; verify zero-diff on both stacks. 5. **Verify with preview** — the acceptance test for any aliased refactor is a `pulumi preview` showing update/no-op, never replace/delete, for the affected resources. 6. **Clean up** — once applied and stable, when it's safe to remove aliases, and the risk of removing them too early. Output as: (a) a URN-change map for the refactor, (b) the aliased code for each change in my language, (c) the cross-stack move procedure if relevant, (d) the preview-based verification (what a safe diff looks like), (e) an alias-cleanup note. Bias toward: an alias for every identity change, a preview that shows zero replacements before applying, and extra caution on stateful resources.
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