CHANGELOG.md

0.3.8 (unreleased)

0.3.7 (September 9, 2013)

BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBILITIES:

• The "event_delay" option for the DigitalOcean builder is now gone. The builder automatically waits for events to go away. Run your templates through packer fix to get rid of these.

FEATURES:

• NEW PROVISIONER: puppet-masterless. You can now provision with a masterless Puppet setup. [GH-234]
• New globally available template function: uuid. Generates a new random UUID.
• New globally available template function: isotime. Generates the current time in ISO standard format.
• New Amazon template function: clean_ami_name. Substitutes '-' for characters that are illegal to use in an AMI name.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• builder/amazon/all: Ability to specify the format of the temporary keypair created. [GH-389]
• builder/amazon/all: Support the NoDevice flag for block mappings. [GH-396]
• builder/digitalocean: Retry on any pending event errors.
• builder/openstack: Can now specify a project. [GH-382]
• builder/virtualbox: Can now attach hard drive over SATA. [GH-391]
• provisioner/file: Can now upload directories. [GH-251]

BUG FIXES:

• core: Detect if SCP is not enabled on the other side. [GH-386]
• builder/amazon/all: When copying AMI to multiple regions, copy the metadata (tags and attributes) as well. [GH-388]
• builder/amazon/all: Fix panic case where eventually consistent instance state caused an index out of bounds.
• builder/virtualbox: The vm_name setting now properly sets the OVF name of the output. [GH-401]
• builder/vmware: Autoanswer VMware dialogs. [GH-393]
• command/inspect: Fix weird output for default values for optional vars.

0.3.6 (September 2, 2013)

FEATURES:

• User variables can now be specified as "required", meaning the user MUST specify a value. Just set the default value to "null". [GH-374]

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Much improved interrupt handling. For example, interrupts now cancel much more quickly within provisioners.
• builder/amazon: In -debug mode, the keypair used will be saved to the current directory so you can access the machine. [GH-373]
• builder/amazon: In -debug mode, the DNS is outputted.
• builder/openstack: IPv6 addresses supported for SSH. [GH-379]
• communicator/ssh: Support for private keys encrypted using PKCS8. [GH-376]
• provisioner/chef-solo: You can now use user variables in the json configuration for Chef. [GH-362]

BUG FIXES:

• core: Concurrent map access is completely gone, fixing rare issues with runtime memory corruption. [GH-307]
• core: Fix possible panic when ctrl-C during provisioner run.
• builder/digitalocean: Retry destroy a few times because DO sometimes gives false errors.
• builder/openstack: Properly handle the case no image is made. [GH-375]
• builder/openstack: Specifying a region is now required in a template.
• provisioners/salt-masterless: Use filepath join to properly join paths.

0.3.5 (August 28, 2013)

FEATURES:

• NEW BUILDER: openstack. You can now build on OpenStack. [GH-155]
• NEW PROVISIONER: chef-solo. You can now provision with Chef using chef-solo from local cookbooks.
• builder/amazon: Copy AMI to multiple regions with ami_regions. [GH-322]
• builder/virtualbox,vmware: Can now use SSH keys as an auth mechanism for SSH using ssh_key_path. [GH-70]
• builder/virtualbox,vmware: Support SHA512 as a checksum type. [GH-356]
• builder/vmware: The root hard drive type can now be specified with "disk_type_id" for advanced users. [GH-328]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: Ability to specfy a minion config. [GH-264]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: Ability to upload pillars. [GH-353]

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Output message when Ctrl-C received that we're cleaning up. [GH-338]
• builder/amazon: Tagging now works with all amazon builder types.
• builder/vmware: Option ssh_skip_request_pty for not requesting a PTY for the SSH connection. [GH-270]
• builder/vmware: Specify a vmx_template_path in order to customize the generated VMX. [GH-270]
• command/build: Machine-readable output now contains build errors, if any.
• command/build: An "end" sentinel is outputted in machine-readable output for artifact listing so it is easier to know when it is over.

BUG FIXES:

• core: Fixed a couple cases where a double ctrl-C could panic.
• core: Template validation fails if an override is specified for a non-existent builder. [GH-336]
• core: The SSH connection is heartbeated so that drops can be detected. [GH-200]
• builder/amazon/instance: Remove check for ec2-ami-tools because it didn't allow absolute paths to work properly. [GH-330]
• builder/digitalocean: Send a soft shutdown request so that files are properly synced before shutdown. [GH-332]
• command/build,command/validate: If a non-existent build is specified to '-only' or '-except', it is now an error. [GH-326]
• post-processor/vagrant: Setting OutputPath with a timestamp now always works properly. [GH-324]
• post-processor/vagrant: VirtualBox OVA formats now turn into Vagrant boxes properly. [GH-331]
• provisioner/shell: Retry upload if start command fails, making reboot handling much more robust.

0.3.4 (August 21, 2013)

IMPROVEMENTS:

• post-processor/vagrant: the file being compressed will be shown in the UI [GH-314]

BUG FIXES:

• core: Avoid panics when double-interrupting Packer.
• provisioner/shell: Retry shell script uploads, making reboots more robust if they happen to fail in this stage. [GH-282]

0.3.3 (August 19, 2013)

FEATURES:

• builder/virtualbox: support exporting in OVA format. [GH-309]

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: All HTTP downloads across Packer now support the standard proxy environmental variables (HTTP_PROXY, NO_PROXY, etc.) [GH-252]
• builder/amazon: API requests will use HTTP proxy if specified by enviromental variables.
• builder/digitalocean: API requests will use HTTP proxy if specified by environmental variables.

BUG FIXES:

• core: TCP connection between plugin processes will keep-alive. [GH-312]
• core: No more "unused key keep_input_artifact" for post processors [GH-310]
• post-processor/vagrant: output_path templates now work again.

0.3.2 (August 18, 2013)

FEATURES:

• New command: packer inspect. This command tells you the components of a template. It respects the -machine-readable flag as well so you can parse out components of a template.
• Packer will detect its own crashes (always a bug) and save a "crash.log" file.
• builder/virtualbox: You may now specify multiple URLs for an ISO using "iso_url" in a template. The URLs will be tried in order.
• builder/vmware: You may now specify multiple URLs for an ISO using "iso_url" in a template. The URLs will be tried in order.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: built with Go 1.1.2
• core: packer help output now loads much faster.
• builder/virtualbox: guest_additions_url can now use the Version variable to get the VirtualBox version. [GH-272]
• builder/virtualbox: Do not check for VirtualBox as part of template validation; only check at execution.
• builder/vmware: Do not check for VMware as part of template validation; only check at execution.
• command/build: A path of "-" will read the template from stdin.
• builder/amazon: add block device mappings [GH-90]

BUG FIXES:

• windows: file URLs are easier to get right as Packer has better parsing and error handling for Windows file paths. [GH-284]
• builder/amazon/all: Modifying more than one AMI attribute type no longer crashes.
• builder/amazon-instance: send IAM instance profile data. [GH-294]
• builder/digitalocean: API request parameters are properly URL encoded. [GH-281]
• builder/virtualbox: dowload progress won't be shown until download actually starts. [GH-288]
• builder/virtualbox: floppy files names of 13 characters are now properly written to the FAT12 filesystem. [GH-285]
• builder/vmware: dowload progress won't be shown until download actually starts. [GH-288]
• builder/vmware: interrupt works while typing commands over VNC.
• builder/virtualbox: floppy files names of 13 characters are now properly written to the FAT12 filesystem. [GH-285]
• post-processor/vagrant: Process user variables. [GH-295]

0.3.1 (August 12, 2013)

IMPROVEMENTS:

• provisioner/shell: New setting start_retry_timeout which is the timeout for the provisioner to attempt to start the remote process. This allows the shell provisioner to work properly with reboots. [GH-260]

BUG FIXES:

• core: Remote command output containing '\r' now looks much better within the Packer output.
• builder/vmware: Fix issue with finding driver files. [GH-279]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: Uploads work properly from Windows. [GH-276]

0.3.0 (August 12, 2013)

BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBILITIES:

• All {{.CreateTime}} variables within templates (such as for AMI names) are now replaced with {{timestamp}}. Run packer fix to fix your templates.

FEATURES:

• User Variables allow you to specify variables within your templates that can be replaced using the command-line, files, or environmental variables. This dramatically improves the portability of packer templates. See the documentation for more information.
• Machine-readable output can be enabled by passing the -machine-readable flag to any Packer command.
• All strings in a template are now processed for variables/functions, so things like {{timestamp}} can be used everywhere. More features will be added in the future.
• The amazon builders (all of them) can now have attributes of their resulting AMIs modified, such as access permissions and product codes.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• builder/amazon/all: User data can be passed to start the instances. [GH-253]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: local_state_tree is no longer required, allowing you to use shell provisioner (or others) to bring this down. [GH-269]

BUG FIXES:

• builder/amazon/ebs,instance: Retry deleing security group a few times. [GH-278]
• builder/vmware: Workstation works on Windows XP now. [GH-238]
• builder/vmware: Look for files on Windows in multiple locations using multiple environmental variables. [GH-263]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: states aren't deleted after the run anymore. [GH-265]
• provisioner/salt-masterless: error if any commands exit with a non-zero exit status. [GH-266]

0.2.3 (August 7, 2013)

IMPROVEMENTS:

• builder/amazon/all: Added Amazon AMI tag support [GH-233]

BUG FIXES:

• core: Absolute/relative filepaths on Windows now work for iso_url and other settings. [GH-240]
• builder/amazon/all: instance info is refreshed while waiting for SSH, allowing Packer to see updated IP/DNS info. [GH-243]

0.2.2 (August 1, 2013)

FEATURES:

• New builder: amazon-chroot can create EBS-backed AMIs without launching a new EC2 instance. This can shave minutes off of the AMI creation process. See the docs for more info.
• New provisioner: salt-masterless will provision the node using Salt without a master.
• The vmware builder now works with Workstation 9 on Windows. [GH-222]
• The vmware builder now works with Player 5 on Linux. [GH-190]

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Colors won't be outputted on Windows unless in Cygwin.
• builder/amazon/all: Added iam_instance_profile to launch the source image with a given IAM profile. [GH-226]

BUG FIXES:

• builder/virtualbox,vmware: relative paths work properly as URL configurations. [GH-215]
• builder/virtualbox,vmware: fix race condition in deleting the output directory on Windows by retrying.

0.2.1 (July 26, 2013)

FEATURES:

• New builder: amazon-instance can create instance-storage backed AMIs.
• VMware builder now works with Workstation 9 on Linux.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• builder/amazon/all: Ctrl-C while waiting for state change works
• builder/amazon/ebs: Can now launch instances into a VPC for added protection [GH-210]
• builder/virtualbox,vmware: Add backspace, delete, and F1-F12 keys to the boot command.
• builder/virtualbox: massive performance improvements with big ISO files because an expensive copy is avoided. [GH-202]
• builder/vmware: CD is removed prior to exporting final machine. [GH-198]

BUG FIXES:

• builder/amazon/all: Gracefully handle when AMI appears to not exist while AWS state is propogating. [GH-207]
• builder/virtualbox: Trim carriage returns for Windows to properly detect VM state on Windows. [GH-218]
• core: build names no longer cause invalid config errors. [GH-197]
• command/build: If any builds fail, exit with non-zero exit status.
• communicator/ssh: SCP exit codes are tested and errors are reported. [GH-195]
• communicator/ssh: Properly change slash direction for Windows hosts. [GH-218]

0.2.0 (July 16, 2013)

BACKWARDS INCOMPATIBILITIES:

• "iso_md5" in the virtualbox and vmware builders is replaced with "iso_checksum" and "iso_checksum_type" (with the latter set to "md5"). See the announce below on packer fix to automatically fix your templates.

FEATURES:

• NEW COMMAND: packer fix will attempt to fix templates from older versions of Packer that are now broken due to backwards incompatibilities. This command will fix the backwards incompatibilities introduced in this version.
• Amazon EBS builder can now optionally use a pre-made security group instead of randomly generating one.
• DigitalOcean API key and client IDs can now be passed in as environmental variables. See the documentatin for more details.
• VirtualBox and VMware can now have floppy_files specified to attach floppy disks when booting. This allows for unattended Windows installs.
• packer build has a new -force flag that forces the removal of existing artifacts if they exist. [GH-173]
• You can now log to a file (instead of just stderr) by setting the PACKER_LOG_FILE environmental variable. [GH-168]
• Checksums other than MD5 can now be used. SHA1 and SHA256 can also be used. See the documentation on iso_checksum_type for more info. [GH-175]

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: invalid keys in configuration are now considered validation errors. [GH-104]
• core: all builders now share a common SSH connection core, improving SSH reliability over all the builders.
• amazon-ebs: Credentials will come from IAM role if available. [GH-160]
• amazon-ebs: Verify the source AMI is EBS-backed before launching. [GH-169]
• shell provisioner: the build name and builder type are available in the PACKER_BUILD_NAME and PACKER_BUILDER_TYPE env vars by default, respectively. [GH-154]
• vmware: error if shutdown command has non-zero exit status.

BUG FIXES:

• core: UI messages are now properly prefixed with spaces again.
• core: If SSH connection ends, re-connection attempts will take place. [GH-152]
• virtualbox: "paused" doesn't mean the VM is stopped, improving shutdown detection.
• vmware: error if guest IP could not be detected. [GH-189]

0.1.5 (July 7, 2013)

FEATURES:

• "file" uploader will upload files from the machine running Packer to the remote machine.
• VirtualBox guest additions URL and checksum can now be specified, allowing the VirtualBox builder to have the ability to be used completely offline.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: If SCP is not available, a more descriptive error message is shown telling the user. [GH-127]
• shell: Scripts are now executed by default according to their shebang, not with /bin/sh. [GH-105]
• shell: You can specify what interpreter you want inline scripts to run with inline_shebang.
• virtualbox: Delete the packer-made SSH port forwarding prior to exporting the VM.

BUG FIXES:

• core: Non-200 response codes on downloads now show proper errors. [GH-141]
• amazon-ebs: SSH handshake is retried. [GH-130]
• vagrant: The BuildName template propery works properly in the output path.
• vagrant: Properly configure the provider-specific post-processors so things like vagrantfile_template work. [GH-129]
• vagrant: Close filehandles when copying files so Windows can rename files. [GH-100]

0.1.4 (July 2, 2013)

FEATURES:

• virtualbox: Can now be built headless with the "Headless" option. [GH-99]
• virtualbox: and codes for waiting 5 and 10 seconds during the boot sequence, respectively. [GH-97]
• vmware: Can now be built headless with the "Headless" option. [GH-99]
• vmware: and codes for waiting 5 and 10 seconds during the boot sequence, respectively. [GH-97]
• vmware: Disks are defragmented and compacted at the end of the build. This can be disabled using "skip_compaction"

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Template syntax errors now show line and character number. [GH-56]
• amazon-ebs: Access key and secret access key default to environmental variables. [GH-40]
• virtualbox: Send password for keyboard-interactive auth [GH-121]
• vmware: Send password for keyboard-interactive auth [GH-121]

BUG FIXES:

• vmware: Wait until shut down cleans up properly to avoid corrupt disk files [GH-111]

0.1.3 (July 1, 2013)

FEATURES:

• The VMware builder can now upload the VMware tools for you into the VM. This is opt-in, you must specify the tools_upload_flavor option. See the website for more documentation.

IMPROVEMENTS:

• digitalocean: Errors contain human-friendly error messages. [GH-85]

BUG FIXES:

• core: More plugin server fixes that avoid hangs on OS X 10.7 [GH-87]
• vagrant: AWS boxes will keep the AMI artifact around [GH-55]
• virtualbox: More robust version parsing for uploading guest additions. [GH-69]
• virtualbox: Output dir and VM name defaults depend on build name, avoiding collisions. [GH-91]
• vmware: Output dir and VM name defaults depend on build name, avoiding collisions. [GH-91]

0.1.2 (June 29, 2013)

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Template doesn't validate if there are no builders.
• vmware: Delete any VMware files in the VM that aren't necessary for it to function.

BUG FIXES:

• core: Plugin servers consider a port in use if there is any error listening to it. This fixes I18n issues and Windows. [GH-58]
• amazon-ebs: Sleep between checking instance state to avoid RequestLimitExceeded [GH-50]
• vagrant: Rename VirtualBox ovf to "box.ovf" [GH-64]
• vagrant: VMware boxes have the correct provider type.
• vmware: Properly populate files in artifact so that the Vagrant post-processor works. [GH-63]

0.1.1 (June 28, 2013)

BUG FIXES:

• core: plugins listen explicitly on 127.0.0.1, fixing odd hangs. [GH-37]
• core: fix race condition on verifying checksum of large ISOs which could cause panics [GH-52]
• virtualbox: boot_wait defaults to "10s" rather than 0. [GH-44]
• virtualbox: if http_port_min and max are the same, it will no longer panic [GH-53]
• vmware: boot_wait defaults to "10s" rather than 0. [GH-44]
• vmware: if http_port_min and max are the same, it will no longer panic [GH-53]

0.1.0 (June 28, 2013)

• Initial release