Terragrunt-only folders not found by autoplan

[BhasherBEL]

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Overview of the Issue

When using auto-expanding projects with autoplan, folders containing only terragrunt files don't seems to be found.

Reproduction Steps

1. Add a project with auto-expanding dir and autoplan

projects:
- dir: a/**/*
  autoplan:
    when_modified:
    - "*.hcl"
    - "*.tf"
    enabled: true

2. Add a/b/c/terragrunt.hcl with a source, so that a/b/c does not contain any tf file

a/b/c
├── .terraform.lock.hcl
├── .terragrunt-cache
└── terragrunt.hcl

3. Open a PR.

The folder a/b/c/ will not be found.

4. Add a tf file

a/b/c
├── .terraform.lock.hcl
├── .terragrunt-cache
├── terragrunt.hcl
└── auto.tf

4. Re-run the pipeline

The folder a/b/c/ will be found.

Logs

Environment details

• Atlantis version: v0.40.0
• Deployment method: helm
• Atlantis flags: server

Atlantis server-side config file:

repos:
- id: /.*/
  workflow: terragrunt
workflows:
  terragrunt:
    plan:
      steps:
        - env:
            name: TG_TF_PATH
            value: tofu
        - run: terragrunt plan -no-color -out $PLANFILE
    apply:
      steps:
        - run: terragrunt apply -no-color $PLANFILE

Repo atlantis.yaml file:

version: 3

automerge: false
parallel_plan: true
parallel_apply: true

projects:
- dir: a/**/*
  autoplan:
    when_modified:
    - "*.hcl"
    - "*.tf"
    enabled: true

Additional Context

[dosubot]

Hi @BhasherBEL! I'm Dosu and I’m helping the atlantis team.

This is a known limitation. When using glob patterns like dir: a/**/*, Atlantis's directory expansion logic filters to only include directories containing .tf files, which excludes Terragrunt-only directories even if they match the pattern.

The filtering happens in the project finder during glob expansion—it validates directories by checking for .tf file presence, regardless of your when_modified configuration.

Workaround: Add an empty .tf file (like auto.tf) to your Terragrunt-only directories, which you've already discovered works.

Unfortunately, configuring --autoplan-file-list to include **/terragrunt.hcl doesn't help here because the issue is in the directory discovery phase, not the file change detection phase.

This would likely require a code change to make the directory filtering configurable or to recognize .hcl files as valid project indicators.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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