Plugin nomenclature change?

Packer
1

External third party plugins if I recall are supposed to be named like this
packer-- ?
This was in the transcripts of this talk Extending Packer, has this changed at least on 1.7.0 and above via HCL?

eg: I’m trying to use GitHub - martinbaillie/packer-post-processor-ami-copy: Packer post-processor plugin for copying, encrypting, tagging a built AMI into other accounts. in an HCL2 template such as :

packer {
required_plugins {
packer-post-processor-ami-copy = {
version = “>= 1.0.8”
source = “github.com/martinbaillie/packer-post-processor-ami-copy”
}
}
}

But when I run packer init
I see :
`Error: Invalid plugin type

on myawesomebuild.json.pkr.hcl line 49, in packer:
49: packer-post-processor-ami-copy = {
50: version = “>= 1.0.8”
51: source = “github.com/martinbaillie/packer-post-processor-ami-copy”
52: }

Plugin source “github.com/martinbaillie/packer-post-processor-ami-copy” has a
type with the prefix “packer-”, which isn’t allowed because it would be
redundant to name a Packer plugin with that prefix. If you are the author of
this plugin, rename it to not include the prefix.`

2

Same behavior in the example plugin from the same talk,
on anewtempalte.json.pkr.hcl line 51, in packer:
51: packer-provisioner-com = {
52: version = “>= 0.1”
53: source = “github.com/SwampDragons/packer-provisioner-comment”
54: }

Plugin source “github.com/swampdragons/packer-provisioner-comment” has a type
with the prefix “packer-”, which isn’t allowed because it would be redundant to
name a Packer plugin with that prefix. If you are the author of this plugin,
rename it to not include the prefix.

I may have missed an announcement/documentation update, just wondering if this has changed indeed

3

forgive the typo, in my snipped I had the plugin name incorrect as ‘packer-provisioner-com’ - that was a copy/paste error, I’m using the name correctly

4

Hello!

I think you need to take one step back and go through Upgrading your template to use Packer init | Packer by HashiCorp, if you haven’t already.
This will help you know if the plugin you use is compatible with v1.7.0 API version. There’s is a table that shows what is compatible with what.

To use packer init and required_plugins, the plugin must be a multi-component plugin and compatible with 5.0 API version.

The source field must not contain the packer-plugin- prefix. That means, when the plugin you use is compatible with packer init, its source will be github.com/martinbaillie/ami-copy.

Anyways, I think we can improve the error logs there. Do you mind opening an issue for the logs, so we can keep track of it.

5

Another great source of information on packer init is the HashiTalk of one of the maintainers. I strongly recommend you to see it!

1 Like
6

hey thankyou!
thank makes sense, could you be so kind to point me to how to manually install a single-component plugin however?
The documentation here Plugins | Packer by HashiCorp seems to not have that block anymore

7

Yep! Sorry for the missing documentation there, we fixed it and will deploy it soon.
Until then you can check out the doc in our preview: Plugins | Packer by HashiCorp

Let me know if you need any help or have any questions!

1 Like