Packer variables

[Christopher Campbell]

Hi all, wanted to see if there is an easy way to use variables in powershell provisioner.

currently i have variable declared as the following and want to replace the [[key]] to be the variable but i am unable to find any examples on how to do this.

"variables":{

 "key_info": "1234567890"

}

      "type": "powershell",

      "inline": [

        

        "Start-Process -FilePath \"C:\\atmp\\vs_enterprise.exe\" -ArgumentList \"--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.Azure --productKey [[key]] --quiet\" -NoNewWindow -Wait"

      ]

    },

[Sean Nolan]

The value you put in the variables block is just a default, you can pass a value for the variable when you run the packer build. You can pass values on the command line with the var flag or put them in a file and refer to the file with the var-file flag on the command line.

Then in your template code you use the variable values with the user function {{user `varable`}}, so the line in your template code would be

"Start-Process -FilePath \"C:\\atmp\\vs_enterprise.exe\" -ArgumentList \"--add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.Azure --productKey {{user `key_info`}} --quiet\" -NoNewWindow -Wait"

This is all explained in the documentation here:

https://www.packer.io/docs/templates/user-variables.html