Refresh command does not detect differences in letter casing for resource name

[cermakp]

What happened?

When there is a difference in letter casing in a resource's name, the pulumi refresh command does not detect it. The pulumi refresh command should recognize such changes and synchronize the stack with the resource name in Azure.

Example

1. Define a Log Analytics workspace in Azure named "lawTestService".
2. Define the stack containing the same resource, but with different letter casing in the workspace name, such as:
   "workspaceName": "lawtestservice".
3. Run pulumi refresh in the command line – no changes are detected.

Expected behavior
The workspace name in the stack should be overwritten to "lawTestService" and synchronized with the name defined in the Azure provider.

Output of pulumi about

running 'dotnet build -nologo .'
  Determining projects to restore...

  All projects are up-to-date for restore.

C:\Users\cerma\.nuget\packages\microsoft.codeanalysis.netanalyzers\7.0.4\build\Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnalyzers.targets(593,5): warning : The .NET SDK has newer analyzers with version '8.0.0' than what version '7.0.4' of 'Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnaly
zers' package provides. Update or remove this package reference. [C:\Sources\NetCoreBoilerplate\infrastructure\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure.csproj]

  Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure -> C:\Sources\NetCoreBoilerplate\infrastructure\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure\bin\Debug\net8.0\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure.dll



Build succeeded.


C:\Users\cerma\.nuget\packages\microsoft.codeanalysis.netanalyzers\7.0.4\build\Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnalyzers.targets(593,5): warning : The .NET SDK has newer analyzers with version '8.0.0' than what version '7.0.4' of 'Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.NetAnalyzers' package provides. Update or remove this package reference. [C:\Sources\NetCoreBoilerplate\infrastructure\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure\Ori.NetCoreBoilerplate.Infrastructure.csproj]
    1 Warning(s)
    0 Error(s)



Time Elapsed 00:00:00.86



Workload updates are available. Run `dotnet workload list` for more information.

'dotnet build -nologo .' completed successfully
CLI
Version      3.133.0
Go Version   go1.23.1
Go Compiler  gc

Plugins
KIND      NAME          VERSION
resource  azure         5.78.0
resource  azure-native  2.42.1
resource  azuread       5.50.0
resource  azuredevops   3.1.1
language  dotnet        unknown

Host
OS       Microsoft Windows 11 Pro
Version  10.0.22631 Build 22631
Arch     x86_64

This project is written in dotnet: executable='C:\Program Files\dotnet\dotnet.exe' version='8.0.402'

Current Stack: organization/NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack/we.uat

TYPE                                                      URN
pulumi:pulumi:Stack                                       urn:pulumi:we.uat::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack::pulumi:pulumi:Stack::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack-we.uat
pulumi:providers:azure-native                             urn:pulumi:we.uat::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack::pulumi:providers:azure-native::azure-native-tenant-e46bc88e-1a4b-44ff-a158-1b9f7eb4561e-subscription-bf92e86b-7b0b-4d78-8785-c104ce8ffaf4
pulumi:providers:azure                                    urn:pulumi:we.uat::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack::pulumi:providers:azure::azure-tenant-e46bc88e-1a4b-44ff-a158-1b9f7eb4561e-subscription-bf92e86b-7b0b-4d78-8785-c104ce8ffaf4
azure-native:resources:ResourceGroup                      urn:pulumi:we.uat::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack::azure-native:resources:ResourceGroup::rgncboilerplateuatwe-online
azure-native:operationalinsights:Workspace                urn:pulumi:we.uat::NcBoilerplateInfrastructureStack::azure-native:operationalinsights:Workspace::lawncboilerplateuatwe-online


Found no pending operations associated with we.uat

Backend
Name           Pavel-PC
URL            azblob://frameworks
User           PAVEL-PC\cerma
Organizations
Token type     personal

Dependencies:
NAME                           VERSION
Ori.Common.Analyzers.CSharp    7.0.2
Ori.Common.Analyzers.Security  5.0.1
Ori.Common.Pulumi              0.1.35

Additional context

Although pulumi refresh does not detect changes in letter casing, pulumi up does and attempts to replace the resource.

Contributing

Vote on this issue by adding a 👍 reaction.
To contribute a fix for this issue, leave a comment (and link to your pull request, if you've opened one already).

[danielrbradley]

@cermakp thanks for writing this up. Please could you provide a minimal example program of the "before" and "after" programs that we can run to reproduce the issue and use as a basis of the investigation.

It's quite likely that this behaviour is coming from the upstream terraform provider though, so might be best to raise an issue on their side. There have been a number of new versions since v5.78.0 (including a major version) which might be worth testing first to see if this has already been addressed.

[cermakp]

Hi @danielrbradley ,

You will find an example of the application here. The program defines a single resource group with a log analytics workspace inside it.

Here are the steps to reproduce the issue:

1. Create a new stack running the program. The log analytics workspace name will be lawPulumiRefreshSample
   

2. Open the stack definition file and manually change the workspace name to lawPulumiRefreshSAMPLE. This simulates a scenario where the resource name differs between the stack and Azure.
   

3. Run the pulumi refresh command in the terminal. You'll notice that the refresh command does not detect the difference in letter casing.
   

4. Run the pulumi up command in the terminal. The up command correctly detects the letter casing difference.
   

Expected behaviour

Command pulumi refresh should detect the difference in letter casing and synchronize the name from Azure to the stack.

[danielrbradley]

Thanks for the extra detail. This is very helpful.

Firstly, it looks like you're using the Natvie provider rather than the classic provider? If so, I'll transfer this issue.

I think this might be related to refresh only affecting outputs and not the inputs, but will likely need further diagnosis to understand the scenario fully.

How does this currently impact your use of the tool? It looks like doing another up resolves the discrepancy?

[cermakp]

Firstly, it looks like you're using the Natvie provider rather than the classic provider? If so, I'll transfer this issue.

Yes, you are correct, we are using Azure native provider as it is recommended in Pulumi documentation for all new projects.

How does this currently impact your use of the tool? It looks like doing another up resolves the discrepancy?

Currently, our import process generates the resources for the import procedure, which initializes the stack. After this step, we run pulumi refresh to synchronize the stack with the current resource configuration in Azure. Finally, we execute pulumi up. When stack resources are initialized with different letter casing (for example), pulumi up attempts to replace the existing resource. We want to avoid replacing resources in Azure.

[danielrbradley]

Thanks for confirming.

Going back to your original scenario:

1. Define a Log Analytics workspace in Azure named "lawTestService".
2. Define the stack containing the same resource, but with different letter casing in the workspace name, such as: "workspaceName": "lawtestservice".
3. Run pulumi refresh in the command line – no changes are detected.

Could you clarify these steps for my understanding :

1. Create a Log Analytics workspace manually via the Azure Portal named "lawTestService"
2. Write a Pulumi program containing a workspace with exactly the same properties, except for the casing of the name.
3. Are you then performing an import via code, or an import via the CLI?
4. Once the initial import is complete, performing a refresh shows no changes.

I think this likely stems from the fact that Azure doesn't always pass back the exact values that we passed as inputs, so we have some mechanisms for accounting for this to avoid perminant diffs.

The other workaround that should be fine here (apart from editing the state) would be re-importing with the correct case defined in the code.

[danielrbradley]

This might be resolved via #3633

[cermakp]

Could you clarify these steps for my understanding :

1. Create a Log Analytics workspace manually via the Azure Portal named "lawTestService"
2. Write a Pulumi program containing a workspace with exactly the same properties, except for the casing of the name.
3. Are you then performing an import via code, or an import via the CLI?
4. Once the initial import is complete, performing a refresh shows no changes.

Yes, you are correct about the steps. Regarding the import, we are using a CLI tool for that.

However, the provided example program is unrelated to the import process itself. It simply demonstrates that the refresh command does not detect any changes in letter casing of the resources's name.

However, as you can see, the preview command is able to detect such changes, so I believe this detection is missing in the refresh command

[cermakp]

This might be resolved via #3633

It does not seem that it is related to the issue with refresh

[cermakp]

This might be resolved via #3633

I have just tried the latest version, including the fix to the issue you mentioned, but there is no difference. The issue with refresh command still exists.

[cermakp]

Hi @danielrbradley, any news?

[cermakp]

Hello, is there any progress?

[danielrbradley]

Thanks for confirming those details. I think we've now captured all the relevant details in which will let us investigate the root cause.

The next step will likely be to reproduce the issue under a debugger to then write up a design for a fix. I can't currently give an ETA on that as this will need to be prioritised for work alongside other customer requests and ongoing maintenance work.