CDKTF parallel deploys fail with text file busy errors

TL;DR

Pass --parallelism 1 to serialize the stack deployments. The error comes from concurrent processes racing on the same provider binary files, so removing the concurrency removes the race.

Steps

1. Pass --parallelism 1 to serialize the stack deployments. The error comes from concurrent processes racing on the same provider binary files, so removing the concurrency removes the race. If you need parallel speed back, split the stacks into separate deploy invocations that do not share provider state, rather than fighting the file locking.

When to use

You are seeing this: If you need parallel speed back, split the stacks into separate deploy invocations that do not share provider state, rather than fighting the file locking. Use this skill when you run into "CDKTF parallel deploys fail with text file busy errors".

When not to use

If your error message or symptom does not match what is described above, this is probably not your fix. Search for your exact error text instead of forcing this one to fit.

Versions

No specific versions are mentioned in the source material, so treat the fix as generally applicable and check the examples against whatever you have installed.

Why this happens

The original report does not dig into a root cause. It documents the symptom and the fix that resolved it.

Source: GitHub issue hashicorp/terraform-cdk#2741 (closed): deploying multiple stacks in parallel intermittently fails with text file busy errors when the stacks share the same provider. Maintainer ansgarm gives the workaround directly in the thread.

Verified resolution: Pass --parallelism 1 to serialize the stack deployments. The error comes from concurrent processes racing on the same provider binary files, so removing the concurrency removes the race. If you need parallel speed back, split the stacks into separate deploy invocations that do not share provider state, rather than fighting the file locking.

Source URL: https://github.com/hashicorp/terraform-cdk/issues/2741