packer: relax constraints on local sources #12911

lbajolet-hashicorp · 2024-04-09T15:19:07Z

The source parsing logic was heavily directed towards Github compatible source URIs, however if we want to support more cases, we need to make sure we are able to specify those URIs, and to load plugins installed from those sources.

Right now, since the getters available are only github.com, we will not support remotely instlling plugins from sources other than github.com, with the same set of constraints as before. However, we do support now installing from a local plugin binary to any kind of source, and we support loading them, including if a template wants this plugin installed locally with version constraints.

Related to: #12863

hcl2template/addrs/plugin.go

sylviamoss · 2024-04-23T14:58:47Z

However, we do support now installing from a local plugin binary to any kind of source, and we support loading them, including if a template wants this template installed locally with version constraints.

I need help understanding this part, can you show me an example?

hcl2template/addrs/plugin.go

lbajolet-hashicorp · 2024-04-23T20:35:18Z

However, we do support now installing from a local plugin binary to any kind of source, and we support loading them, including if a template wants this template installed locally with version constraints.

I need help understanding this part, can you show me an example?

Duplicate template in the message, it should read "including if a template wants this plugin installed locally with version constraints".

What that means essentially (and the problem we're trying to solve here), is if someone had a plugin that cannot be sourced through github.com, they could still install it manually as packer-plugin-<name>. Since we're removing this capacity with 1.11.0, that means they'd need to make their source something like github.com/org/name, which may not necessarily fit the expected source location of the plugin binaries.
Now they cannot be installed still, as we don't expose any getter other than github, but at least relaxing the constraints on the source means that they can have whatever makes sense for a source URI (so anything that is essentially a hostname and a resource path, even minimal), and they can install them locally, and use required_plugins blocks to manage which version of a plugin is required by their template.

Ex: artifactory.hashicorp.org/packer/releases/binaries would work as a source, but you cannot install remotely since we don't have a getter for it, but you can still get the binaries and install them with packer plugins install --path, with the expected source.

sylviamoss · 2024-04-24T13:24:38Z

I had understood exactly that initially but wasn't sure if I was right. Thanks for explaining @lbajolet-hashicorp

sylviamoss

👍🏼 LGTM

acctest/plugin/plugin_acc_test.go

hcl2template/addrs/plugin.go

nywilken

The re-roll looks good. I left a few more nits and suggestions. Feel free to merge when ready.

acctest/plugin/component_acc_test.go

acctest/plugin/plugin_acc_test.go

hcl2template/addrs/plugin.go

hcl2template/addrs/plugin_test.go

packer/plugin-getter/github/getter.go

The invalid_inexplicit_source_2 subtest for parse used to fail in previous versions of Packer, but with the latest changes to plugin source management, it won't, at least at parsing time, instead it fails later when the Github getter (the only available for now) cannot get the plugin binary from the source, as the source is not a valid Github URI.

The source parsing logic was heavily directed towards Github compatible source URIs, however if we want to support more cases, we need to make sure we are able to specify those URIs, and to load plugins installed from those sources. Right now, since the getters available are only github.com, we will not support remotely instlling plugins from sources other than github.com, with the same set of constraints as before. However, we do support now installing from a local plugin binary to any kind of source, and we support loading them, including if a template wants this plugin installed locally with version constraints.

github-actions · 2024-05-30T02:06:05Z

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lbajolet-hashicorp added enhancement plugin-block For plugin block feature command/plugins Issues related to the plugins management commands labels Apr 9, 2024

lbajolet-hashicorp requested a review from a team as a code owner April 9, 2024 15:19

lbajolet-hashicorp changed the title ~~packer: relax constraints on sources~~ packer: relax constraints on local sources Apr 9, 2024

lbajolet-hashicorp force-pushed the poc_relaxed_sources branch 6 times, most recently from b51b6f6 to 3242f81 Compare April 18, 2024 17:25

sylviamoss reviewed Apr 23, 2024

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