Packer under Windows 10 doesn't override default variables

[Chris Marks]

Hi,

I'm running into something that I'm not sure I understand.  Here's my (stripped down for example) use case:  I want to create an AMI where the name includes the environment it is built for (test, prod, etc).  Here's the packer file (named testVar.json):

{

  "variables": {

    "aws_access_key": "",

    "aws_secret_key": "",

    "cpe_env": "test"

  },

  "builders": [{

    "type": "amazon-ebs",

    "access_key": "{{user `aws_access_key`}}",

    "secret_key": "{{user `aws_secret_key`}}",

    "region": "us-west-2",

    "source_ami": "ami-b04e92d0",

    "instance_type": "t2.micro",

    "ssh_username": "ec2-user",

    "ami_name": "TestAMI-{{isotime \"20060102-1504\"}}-{{user `cpe_env`}}",

    "vpc_id": "someVPC",

    "subnet_id": "someSubnet"

  }]

}

When I run the following Packer command on Windows 10, I end up with an AMI name like "TestAMI-20161019-2241-test".  When I run the same command on Linux (Amazon Linux), I end up with an AMI name like "TestAMI-20161019-2241-prod".  I think this is a bug in Packer, but wanted to check here before submitting in case I'm missing something.

packer build -var 'aws_access_key=someAccessKey' -var 'aws_secret_key=someSecretKey' -var 'cpe_env=prod' testVar.json

I've tried this Packer 0.10.1 and 0.10.2.

Thanks,

topher

[Rickard von Essen]

Do you run it in cmd or Powershell? I'm pretty sure that is working and is not a bug. But I don't have any Windows machine to test on. What happens if you drop the quotes. I would suspect that it's just the windows shell that parses things different.

Try this template (test.json):

{

  "variables": { "avar": "testing" },

  "builders": [ {

    "type": "file",

    "content": "{{ user `avar` }} World!",

    "target": "file.txt"

  } ]

}

And run

packer build -var avar=Hello test.json; cat file.txt 

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