Offer installation option for specific version

[spawnia]

To improve upon the reproducibility of my setup, I figured out this way of installing a specific version and think it may be useful for others.

[akutz]

Love this addition! One thing -- could we make it a little more flexible to support not just different versions from the primary repo, but from any fork as well? Such as this example from the Kubernetes image builder. It might look like this below:

---

To install a specific version, use the following environment variables to customize the source of the install script:

Name	Description	Default
GIT_USER	The name of a GitHub user or organization.	vmware
GIT_REPO	The name of the GitHub repository.	cloud-init-vmware-guestinfo
GIT_SLUG	A / delimited combination of a GitHub user/organization and repository, prefixed with the GitHub raw content URL.	https://raw.githubusercontent.com/${GIT_USER}/${GIT_REPO}
GIT_REF	A git branch name, tag name, or commit ID.	v1.4.1
GIT_URL	The full path to the datasource installation script.	${GIT_SLUG}/${GIT_REF}/install.sh

The following command uses the above environment variables in such a way that if an environment variable is already set, its existing value will be used, otherwise the value will default to the value from the above table:

GIT_USER="${GIT_USER:-vmware}" \
GIT_REPO="${GIT_REPO:-cloud-init-vmware-guestinfo}" \
GIT_SLUG="${GIT_SLUG:-https://raw.githubusercontent.com/${GIT_USER}/${GIT_REPO}}" \
GIT_REF="${GIT_REF:-v.1.4.1}" \
GIT_URL="${GIT_URL:-${GIT_SLUG}/${GIT_REF}/install.sh}" \
curl -sSL "${GIT_URL}" | sh -

[akutz]

I am also fine accepting this as-is if you think the above overcomplicates things.

[akutz]

One small nit though would be that you should not need to export the env var:

GIT_REF="v1.4.1" && \
curl -sSL "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vmware/cloud-init-vmware-guestinfo/${GIT_REF}/install.sh" | sh -

The above will keep the shell free of an additional, exported env var; almost always a good thing.

[spawnia]

A guide on how to install from a fork might be suitable for CONTRIBUTING.md. As of now, I think whoever decides to fork and install their own version should be deep enough into the weeds to figure out the installation.

[akutz]

This issue is being closed because this datasource has been merged into cloud-init (canonical/cloud-init#953):

Component	Source	Tests
Datasource	DataSourceVMware.py	test_vmware.py
Identification	ds-identify	test_ds_identify.py
Documentation	vmware.rst

In order to participate in the growth of this datasource moving forward, please:

• Ask a question in the #cloud-init IRC channel on Libera
• Search the cloud-init mailing list archive
• Join the cloud-init mailing list
• Report issues with Launchpad

Once again, many thanks to the wonderful community that has grown around this datasource, and I look forward to seeing everyone in the new cloud-init forums!