An overdue update to the Packer Provisioner for Salt

Photo by Kira auf der Heide on Unsplash

I began working on the Packer Provisioner for Salt in the middle of 2024 and launched the first version just as my role ended at Broadcom. At the time I had a few roadmap items that I wanted to complete. Guess what? There’s an update!

The original post that I published at the time tells you more about the Provisioner for Salt and provides a high-level overview of Salt. If you’re not familiar with it, I’d suggest starting there.

Introducing the Packer Provisioner for Salt

26 June 2024·9 mins

Projects VMware vExpert Salt HashiCorp Packer Golang Plugin Community Provisioner

As a long time user of Salt and HashiCorp Packer, I wanted to combine these two technologies. My Packer plugin for Salt is the result. Find out more about it!

At the time I mentioned that one of my roadmap items was to provide support for using pillar data. With the latest update (0.5.6 at the time of writing) that is now a reality! Take a look at the plugin documentation on the HashiCorp developer site and you will see the pillar_files, pillar_tree, and pillar_directory options described there.

Installation / update of the plugin is simple, just include the required_plugins stanza in your HCL file:

packer {
  required_plugins {
    salt = {
      version = ">= 0.5.6"
      source  = "github.com/mpoore/salt"
    }
  }
}

And use the packer init command to have the latest plugin downloaded.

I know what you’re thinking. “That’s great, but are there any examples?” Don’t worry, I’ve got you covered! My Packer repository has a growing number of examples.

mpoore/packer

Packer build repository

HCL

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