Important Update: Official Packer Plugin Distribution Moving to releases.hashicorp.com

Packer
1

Hi Packer Community,

We’re announcing an important change to how official, HashiCorp-maintained Packer plugins are distributed, effective with the Packer v1.14.0 upcoming release.

This change standardizes our release process and ensures a more secure and reliable pipeline for plugin delivery.

TL;DR

The source for official Packer plugins is moving from GitHub Releases to the official HashiCorp release site, releases.hashicorp.com. To automatically install new versions of these plugins with packer init, you will need to be on Packer v1.14.0 or later. Your HCL templates and workflow commands (packer init, packer build) will not change.

What is Changing?

As you know, packer init automatically installs the plugins defined in your HCL templates. Until now, Packer has been configured to download these plugins from their respective GitHub repositories.

With this update, the following official plugins will now be published exclusively to releases.hashicorp.com:

  • amazon
  • ansible
  • azure
  • docker
  • googlecompute
  • qemu
  • vagrant
  • virtualbox

Packer v1.14.0 and newer versions are configured to fetch these plugins from this new, centralized location.

What This Means For You

Your required actions depend on which version of Packer you are using.

For users on Packer v1.14.0 and later (Recommended Path)

Your experience will be seamless and requires no changes on your part. Your existing packer init command will automatically point to the new HashiCorp release site to download the required plugins. You will continue to receive new plugin versions as they are released.

There are no changes to syntax or commands. The required_plugins block in your HCL template works exactly as before.

For users on Packer versions before v1.14.0 (Action Required for Updates)

Older versions of Packer are configured to look for new plugin releases on GitHub. Since we will no longer publish new official plugin versions there, your existing Packer installation will not be able to find and install any new plugin versions released after this change.

You can continue to use the plugin versions you already have, but packer init will not be able to pull any updates. To get new features, bug fixes, and security patches for official plugins, you have two options:

  1. (Highly Recommended) Upgrade Packer: Upgrading to Packer v1.14.0+ is the best path forward.
  2. (Workaround) Manually Install Plugins: If you cannot upgrade Packer, you must manually install the newer plugin version. Refer Manually install plugins using the CLI .

Key Takeaways

  1. The Source is Changing: Official Packer plugins will now be released only on releases.hashicorp.com
  2. Upgrade for Updates: To get new plugin versions automatically, you must use Packer v1.14.0 or later.
  3. No Workflow Changes: For users on v1.14.0+, the packer init command and HCL syntax remain identical.
  4. Legacy Limitation: Older Packer versions will not see new plugin updates from the official source.

We strongly encourage all users to upgrade to the latest version of Packer to ensure you have access to the latest features and improvements.

Please feel free to ask any questions in the thread below.

Thanks,
The HashiCorp Packer Team