I ran across this thread from almost a year ago with no discussion.
When using the vsphere-clone builder is it possible to set a Content Library path to an OVF or VM template and use that to create a new VM? Using vsphere-iso one can define a Content Library path with /ISO/path/to/file.iso but trying the same thing for (/OVF/path/to/file.ovf) creates the error:
==> vsphere-clone: Cloning VM...
Build 'vsphere-clone' errored after 116 milliseconds 683 microseconds: Error finding vm to clone: vm '/OVF/path/to/file.ovf' not found
I believe that govc is used on the back-end for this. From the documentation I believe library.deploy could be used to deploy the VM. I don’t know if it would require a separate JSON keyword other than template:, though.
I raised an issue on Github:
UPDATE: Issue changed location