How to call a builder from within another plugin in Packer?

[James McCallum]

I am trying to create a custom packer plugin that can resolve the latest version of an image in openstack and then call the Openstack builder using that as the source image. I am also learning golang while I do this.

My plan is to create a custom builder which will handle the lookup and then call the existing Openstack Builder using the resolved image name and pass the other parameters through.

So far I have created the plugin and it's building and trying to call the openstack.Builder functionality, however the plugin just hangs.

james output will be in this color.

2017/12/28 14:39:45 james: 2017/12/28 14:39:45 Serving a plugin connection...

2017/12/28 14:39:45 ui: james output will be in this color.

2017/12/28 14:39:45 ui:

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Build debug mode: false

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Force build: false

2017/12/28 14:39:45 On error:

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Preparing build: james

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Waiting on builds to complete...

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Starting build run: james

2017/12/28 14:39:45 Running builder: james

2017/12/28 14:39:45 [INFO] (telemetry) Starting builder james

2017/12/28 14:39:45 ui: ==> james: in say

==> james: in say

2017/12/28 14:39:45 james: 2017/12/28 14:39:45 Plugin minimum port: 10000

2017/12/28 14:39:45 james: 2017/12/28 14:39:45 Plugin maximum port: 25000

2017/12/28 14:39:45 james: 2017/12/28 14:39:45 Plugin address: unix /tmp/packer-plugin904167325

2017/12/28 14:39:45 james: 2017/12/28 14:39:45 Waiting for connection...

(hangs here)

Does anybody know how I can call a builder from within another builder?

POC source code: https://github.com/jamesla/packer-test-plugin/tree/call_openstack_plugin

[Alvaro Miranda Aguilera]

Hello

My understanding is there is no way to do this, since even the local-shell that run before the builder can't be used to create metadata to the current build.

You will be better to have an small tool or script hat create an small var file in json format and then just call packer build -var-file <file> <template>

Alvaro.

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Alvaro

[Rickard von Essen]

I think as Alvaro said the simplest solution is to build a small wrapper script and pass the source_image in as a variable. Another better alternative is to implement something similar to amazon's source_ami_filter 1) and open a PR to include this in the openstack builder.

1) https://www.packer.io/docs/builders/amazon-ebs.html#source_ami_filter

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