nightly

Nightly releases are snapshots of the development activity on the Packer project that may include new features and bug fixes scheduled for upcoming releases. These releases are made available to make it easier for users to test their existing build configurations against the latest Packer code base for potential issues or to experiment with new features, with a chance to provide feedback on ways to improve the changes before being released.

As these releases are snapshots of the latest code, you may encounter an issue compared to the latest stable release. Users are encouraged to run nightly releases in a non production environment. If you encounter an issue, please check our issue tracker to see if the issue has already been reported; if a report hasn't been made, please report it so we can review the issue and make any needed fixes.

Note: Nightly releases are only available via GitHub Releases, and artifacts are not codesigned or notarized. Distribution via other Release Channels such as the Releases Site or Homebrew is not yet supported.

v1.12.0

1.12.0 (January 22, 2025)

FEATURES:

• core: add support for a DAG-based evaluation on locals and datasources.
  A long-standing odditiy of Packer has been the order of evaluation for
  locals and data sources. In previous versions of Packer, the
  data sources were evaluated first, then the local variables were, making
  it impossible to have a datasource that referenced a local variable as
  part of its configuration.
  This change introduces a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) to evaluate those
  resources, instead of the phased approach of old, which makes the order
  of evaluation not dependent on the type of resource, but instead of the
  detected dependencies between them.
  Note: While we are confident this should be robust enough for general
  use, we do recognise that it is possible some users might encounter issues.
  To give those users a way to continue using the old evaluation method, we
  introduced a -use-sequential-evaluation command-line flag to the build,
  validate, console and inspect subcommands, to force using the sequential
  evaluation approach for those entities.
  GH-13155

• core/hcp: support for uploading SBOMs to HCP Packer.
  Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) are a standardised way to export the various
  software packages linked to an artifact. As some users have expressed a
  need to produce and access those for images they build, we now add the
  feature to Packer itself.
  While the generation of the SBOM itself is not done directly by
  Packer, instead we recommend using known scanners to produce them, we add
  the capacity to upload this SBOM file to HCP Packer, and link it to a
  build artifact.
  GH-13171

• core: support for alternate serialisation formats for plugin communication.
  Packer relies on plugins to do most of the actual workload related to
  building and provisioing artifacts, while Packer is mostly an orchestrator
  for those plugins to perform their work.
  This separation of concerns implies that both entities have to
  communicate on multiple occasions during the course of a build.
  Before v1.12.0 of Packer, and v0.6.0 of the plugin SDK, we used Gob to
  do most of the serialisation for those steps.
  This is however a bit of a problem recently, as go-cty, the library we
  use for dynamic objects lifted from HCL templates, dropped support for
  this a while back.
  Therefore now, we introduce an alternative: protobuf/msgpack, which are
  both usable and maintained by the projects around Packer, so we can begin
  our transition away from gob with this change.
  Note: as with the introduction of the DAG for locals/datasources, this
  is a feature that we are reasonably confident you will not encounter bugs
  with, however we cannot rule-out this possibility, therefore we introduce
  a new environment variable: PACKER_FORCE_GOB, which if set to '1', forces
  the use of Gob instead of protobuf/msgpack.
  GH-13120

IMPROVEMENTS:

• hcl2/json: add aws_secretsmanager_raw funcion.
  When using the AWS secretsmanager function with a non-text secret, one could
  only get a secret once at a time.
  This could get cumbersome if wanting to get multiple through one request,
  which led people to encode their JSON/Object secrets as a big base64
  encoded string that they could get once, and then manipulate through JSON
  functions.
  While the workaround works, it is one extra layer of manipulations to do so,
  therefore a new function to always get the raw textual version of a secret
  is now added to Packer.
  GH-13242
• hcl2: add alltrue and anytrue functions.
  As with Terraform, Packer now supports the HCL functions alltrue and
  anytrue, which returns whether or not a collection only consists of
  true values, or if any is.
  GH-13237
• hcl2: add strcontains function.
  As with Terraform, Packer now supports the HCL function strcontains,
  which returns whether or not a string contains a substring within it.
  GH-13217
  GH-13222
• datasource/http: Support other methods than GET.
  The HTTP datasource used to always use GET requests for getting data
  from a remote HTTP server, which was not always enough since some endpoints
  may only support other methods. This change allows for most of the HTTP
  methods to perform those requests.
  GH-13190
• hcl2: add base64gzip function.
  In some cases, small blobs may need to be kept in memory, and injected in
  a template somewhere else, but if the blob needs to be minimised, the
  base64gzip function can be invoked to compress the blob and expose it
  as a valid HCL2 string for use later.
  GH-13142

BUG FIXES:

• hcl2: Fix duplicate error messages on top-level HCL violations.
  A parsing quirk for HCL templates caused Packer to produce the same parsing
  error multiple times if the error was caused by a top-level violation.
  GH-13245
• build: Include LC_UUID in Darwin binaries.
  A change in how Apple authorises a plugin to access the network caused
  Packer to break on recent (14.7 and above) macOS versions, as Packer uses
  the local network to communicate with plugins.
  The fix is to include an additional UUID into the metadata of the produced
  binary, so it is authorised by macOS to use the local network, which prompts
  an update to the version of Go used for building Packer (1.22.9), as it is
  when this addition is supported by an LDFLAG.
  GH-13214
• hcl2: Don't error on empty bucker slug.
  As reported by members of our community, using a hcp_packer_registry
  block without a bucket slug, even if provided by external means, would cause
  Packer to fail with an invalid bucket slug error. This is most definitely
  a bug, which is addressed in this release.
  GH-13210
• hcp: fix bug when trying to extract HEAD SHA from empty Git repo.
  GH-13165

SECURITY:

• Bump to go-crypto v0.31.0
  GH-13233

NOTES:

• docs: fix UUIDv4 example. A community user has found discrepancies in the
  UUIDv4 examples which were used in our docs, as they do not match the
  standard.
  GH-13229
• hcl2: fix slice initialisation method during variable evaluation phase.
  GH-13175

v1.12.0-alpha1

version: cut packer 1.12.0-alpha1

v1.11.2

1.11.2 (July 30, 2024)

FEATURES

• core/hcp: export Packer options, OS, CI and VCS metadata for a build.
  Following up on the introduction of metadata for builds in Packer 1.11.0,
  this version introduces more metadata. In addition to the version of Packer
  core, and the plugins used, we now capture CI-specific environment variables
  (gitlab-ci and github-actions for now), Git-specific information, OS details
  like architecture and kernel version, and the command-line options passed
  to packer build.

v1.11.1

1.11.1 (July 1, 2024)

NOTES:

• Future Scaffolding: This release contains additional changes that allow
  Packer core to validate access a HCP Packer bucket before trying to
  publish to it. If the bucket does not exist and the associated service
  principle does not have permission to create the bucket Packer will fail
  the build.GH-13059

SECURITY:

• core: Bump github.com/hashicorp/go-retryablehttp to address
  CVE-2024-6104.GH-13081

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core/hcl2: The issue is that local variables in templates are evaluated in a
  non-deterministic order, leading to inconsistent behavior. To fix this,
  local variables will now build a list of direct dependencies, similar to
  datasources, and evaluate these dependencies recursively. A caveat is that
  there's a recursion cap of 10 to prevent infinite recursion; if this limit
  is reached, an error is returned, prompting the user to fix their template.
  GH-13039
• core: bump github.com/hashicorp/hcp-sdk-go from 0.96.0 to 0.99.0
  GH-13063
• core: bump github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk from 0.5.3 to 0.5.4
  GH-13061

BUG FIXES:

• core/hcp: Change UpsertBucket to call GetBucket to address unauthorized error
  from ustream API.
  GH-13059

v1.11.0

1.11.0 (2024-05-31)

NOTES:

• A LICENSE.txt file has been added to the Packer release artifacts.
  GH-12931
  GH-12940

• Breaking Change: Support for loading single-component plugins has been removed from Packer. GH-12785

• Breaking Change: Support for loading plugin binaries following
  the naming convention of packer-plugin-name has been dropped. Packer will now only load
  plugins stored under the Packer plugin directory using the expected namespaced
  directory and CHECKSUM files. This change drops support for loading plugin
  binaries in Packer's executable directory or a template's current working
  directory. GH-12828

/Users/dev/.packer.d/plugins
└── github.com
    └── hashicorp
        └── happycloud
            ├── packer-plugin-happycloud_v0.0.1_x5.0_darwin_arm64
            └── packer-plugin-happycloud_v0.0.1_x5.0_darwin_arm64_SHA256SUM

FEATURES:

• core: Add -ignore-prerelease-plugins flag to disable the use of development
  plugin binaries for the build and validate commands development plugin
  binaries. GH-12828
  GH-12882
• Packer users can now track Packer version and plugin versions used for each
  build artifact in HCP Packer.
  GH-12866
• hcl2: add textencodebase64 and textdecodebase64 funcs
  For feature parity with Terraform, and since having access to strings
  encoded in something that is not UTF-8 is required in some cases, we add
  both the textencodebase64 and textdecodebase64 functions to HCL2 templates.
  Please note these functions return base64 encoded byte slices because of how
  cty/hcl defines strings (NFC normalised, UTF-8 encoded).
  GH-12997

SECURITY:

• Bump github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v3 to address GHSA-c5q2-7r4c-mv6g.
  GH-12880
• Bump golang.org/x/net to v0.24.0 to address GO-2024-2687.
  GH-12924

IMPROVEMENTS:

• core: Bump github.com/hashicorp/hcp-sdk-go from 0.90.0 to 0.96.0.
  GH-12935
  GH-12942
  GH-12960
  GH-12979
• core: Bump github.com/hashicorp/packer-plugin-sdk from 0.5.2 to 0.5.3
  GH-12932
• core: Bump go-getter/v2 from 2.2.1 to v2.2.2
  GH-12988
• datasource/http: don't error on 2xx code
  Previous versions of Packer only supported 200 as a success case for the http
  datasource. This change makes any status code from 200 to 299 successful.
  GH-12989
• core: Move to predictable plugin loading schema - Packer will now only load
  plugins stored under the Packer plugin directory using the expected namespaced
  directory and CHECKSUM files.
  GH-12828
• core: Remove support loading single-component plugins.
  GH-12785
• core: Rename internal packer plugin command to packer execute to avoid user confusion with
  the plugins subcommand.
  GH-12865
• core: Packer now considers development binaries when evaluating plugin
  version constraints. This work allows users to use binaries with versions
  reported as "x.y.z-dev" to be used with the Packer required_plugins
  block. GH-12828
• core: Packer now supports local paths to plugins for the packer plugins remove
  command. This addition makes it possible to pipe commands like
  packer plugins installed with it for speedy cleanup of installed plugins.
  GH-12886
• core: Relax Packer source address URIs within the required_plugins block to
  support the installation of local plugin binary using a custom or internal
  source address (e.g. mycompany.com/plugins/happyorg/happycloud). Remote
  installation using packer init or packer plugins install does not
  support non-GitHub source URIs. Users using alternative hosts must
  install plugins manually using packer plugins install --path.
  GH-12911, [GH-12962] (#12962)
• core: Remote plugins installed containing an internal version number that
  differs from the version number within the binary name can lead to
  confusion when tracking Packer plugin version information. To help track
  such discrepancies in the plugin version, packer init and packer plugin install have been updated to reject installation of such plugins.
  1.0.0-dev). Users are encouraged to notify plugin maintainers of any
  version mismatches.
  GH-12915, GH-12953, GH-12972
• core: don't load plugins with metadata in name
  To avoid confusion with multiple plugins that report the same effective version,
  plugins installed need to have no metadata in their name.
  When installed through Packer commands, the metadata is scrubbed from the name of the
  installed plugin binary, but manually it may still be possible, so we enforce
  that scrubbing at load-time as well.
  GH-12980
• core: Error when multiple paths are specified for PACKER_PLUGIN_PATH
  Since Packer 1.11 removed the capability for PACKER_PLUGIN_PATH to specify
  multiple directories separated by : or ; (depending on the platform), we
  are explicitly erroring when this is discovered, with suggestions as to how
  to fix the problem.
  GH-12967
• core: Version metadata support for plugins. Plugins may now formally have metadata
  in their versions, Packer supports it, and applies the semver recommendations on
  them, i.e. they are ignored for comparison/sorting purposes, but allowed for
  adding extra information about a plugin.
  GH-12888

Given the specified version constraint only versions greater than or equal to 1.1.0 will be considered.

amazon = {
  source = "github.com/hashicorp/amazon"
  version = ">= 1.1.0"
}

If a development binary is installed, Packer will use it if:

1. It is the highest compatible version installed.
2. There is no final plugin version with the same version number installed alongside it.

/Users/dev/.packer.d/plugins
└─ github.com
   └─ hashicorp
    	└── amazon
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.0_x5.0_darwin_arm64
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.0_x5.0_darwin_arm64_SHA256SUM
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1-dev_x5.0_darwin_arm64
          └── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1-dev_x5.0_darwin_arm64_SHA256SUM

Version 1.1.1-dev of the Amazon plugin will match the specified version constraint and be used for executing the Packer build.

If, however, a 1.1.1 release version of the plugin is available, it will have precedence over the development binary.

/Users/dev/.packer.d/plugins
└─ github.com
   └─ hashicorp
    	└── amazon
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1-dev_x5.0_darwin_arm64
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1-dev_x5.0_darwin_arm64_SHA256SUM
          ├── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1_x5.0_darwin_arm64
          └── packer-plugin-amazon_v1.1.1_x5.0_darwin_arm64_SHA256SUM

BUG FIXES:

• core: fix plugin version ordering to not be lexicographic. This fixes an issue
  with how plugins are discovered by Packer, and ensures proper version ordering.
  This means that with this change, versions that are semantically greater,
  but lexicographically inferior will be loaded.
  Ex: 1.0.9 vs. 1.0.10; 1.0.9 > 1.0.10 lexicographically, but semantically
  1.0.10 > 1.0.9
• core/hcp: fix potential race condition when storing plugin details to the HCP
  Packer metadata storage map.
  GH-12936
• core: fix plugin listing on Windows
  This fix addresses bugs present in the alpha releases of 1.11, where
  the discovery of Windows binaries were not matching against the
  filename extension (.exe).
  GH-12981

v1.11.0-beta

version: tag version as 1.11.0-beta

v1.10.3

1.10.3 (April 22, 2024)

NOTES

• A LICENSE.txt file has been added to the Packer release artifacts.
  12981

FEATURES

• Packer users can now track Packer version and plugin versions used for each
  build artifact in HCP Packer.
  GH-12891
  GH-12910
  GH-12923
  GH-12926

SECURITY

• Bump github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v3 to address GHSA-c5q2-7r4c-mv6g.
  GH-12928
• Bump golang.org/x/net to v0.24.0 to address GO-2024-2687.
  GH-12924

BUG FIXES

• cmd/fmt: Display information error when Packer fmt fails due to HCL2
  parsing error. GH-12870

v1.11.0-alpha2

version: bump to v1.11.0-alpha2

v1.11.0-alpha

Bump github.com/go-jose/go-jose/v3 to address CVE-2024-28180