What is the main advantage of using Terraform outputs?

The main advantage of using Terraform outputs is that they display information to users after applying changes. When a Terraform configuration is applied, outputs can provide useful information and insights about the resources that were created, modified, or destroyed. For example, outputs can show IP addresses of created virtual machines, URLs of deployed web applications, or any other pertinent information that may be needed afterward. This enhances the usability of Terraform scripts and allows users to easily access important details without needing to dig into the state files or other resources directly.

Outputs can also serve as a communication mechanism between different Terraform configurations or modules, allowing the output values from one module to be input values to another. This is beneficial for modularity and reusability of Terraform code, where outputs act as a bridge between various parts of the infrastructure defined in Terraform.

The focus of outputs is not on storing configuration settings or managing state files, which serve different main purposes. Additionally, while outputs may assist in understanding resource dependencies, they do not replace or directly manage those dependencies, which are implicitly handled by Terraform's planning and execution process.