v0.22.0

Release Date: 2025-02-11

Bug Fix:

• Reestablishes an empty GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT as late_command for Ubuntu. #982
• Resolves configuration and setup for Python and cloud-init in SUSE Enterprise Linux environments. Added a fallback mechanism for the Python interpreter, removing redundant tasks, and updating package installation and registration. #991

Enhancement:

• Adds confirmation before overwriting existing configuration files. #987
• Add CentOS Stream 10 to project. #989
• Refactors PowerShell script for installation of VMware Tools on Windows. #1011

Chore:

• Updates Debian 11 to 11.11 release. #10102
• Updates Debian Linux 12 to 12.9 release. #1012
• Updates Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to 22.04.5 release. #984
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 9.5 release. #984
• Updates AlmaLinux 9 to 9.5 release. #984
• Updates Rocky Linux 9 to 9.5 release. #984
• Updates Oracle Linux 9 to 9.5 release. #984
• Updates Fedora Server to release 41. #984
• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.12.0. #1013
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.4.2. #986
• Updates required_versions for packer-plugin-ansible to >= 1.1.2. #986
• Updates required_plugins for ethanmdavidson/packer-plugin-git to >= 0.6.3. #986
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.10.0. #986
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.11.0. #1013
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/hcp to >= 0.102.0. #1013
• Updates Gomplate to >= 4.3.0. #1013

New Contributors:

• @ClemCreator made their first contribution in #968
• @Benedikt-Frenzel made their first contribution in #984
• @bottkars made their first contribution in #991
• @lbrigman124 made their first contribution in #1004

Full Changelog: v0.21.0...v0.22.0

v0.21.0

Release Date: 2024-09-26

Bug Fix:

• Updates to debian.yml file to remove the disable flag on cloud-init for Ubuntu 24.04 LTS version. #940
• Updates to debian.yml file to fix cloud-init install issue and additional package issue. #944
• Fixes issue when using http data source with a static IP address and the kickstart file could not
  be sent from Packer host. #959

Enhancement:

• Updates pkr.hcl.example and variables.pkr.hcl with defaults. #944, #945

Chore:

• Removes Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 from the project. #944

  On 30 June 2024, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 reached the end of life.

• Updates Rocky Linux 8.9 to 8.10 release. #944

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.11.0. #960

• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.4.0. #960

• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.9.5. #960

• Updates required_versions for terraform-provider-vsphere to >= 2.8.3. #960

• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/hcp to >= 0.95.0. #960

• Updates required_versions for packer-plugin-ansible to >= 1.1.1. #960

• Removes Centos Linux 7 from the project. #960

• Updates Debian Linux 12.5 to 12.6 release. #960

• Updates Ubuntu 22.04 LTS to 22.04.1 LTS. #965

• Updates AlmaLinux Build pkr.hcl file change version from 8.9 to 8.10 #965

• Updates Oracle Linux Build pkr.hcl file change version from 8.9 to 8.10 #965

v0.20.0

Release Date: 2024-05-29

Bug Fix:

• Updates Windows Desktop Enterprise Edition to support the default use of evaluation mode. #908

Note

Professional Edition does not support evaluation mode. Microsoft Evaluation Center only provides support for Enterprise Edition. Please see the FAQ for additional details.

Enhancement:

• Adds a download script (./download.sh) and a JSON configuration file (project.json) to assist in the download of the guest operating systems. #874, #877

• Refactored the build script (./build.sh) to provide the same experience as the download script. #910

• Adds Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS to the project. #891

• Adds Fedora Server 40 Linux distribution to the project.

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Debian 12 .#883

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9. #888

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8. #888

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Rocky Linux 9. #895

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Rocky Linux 8. #895

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on CentOS Stream 8. #897

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on CentOS Stream 9. #897

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on AlmaLinux OS 8. #898

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on AlmaLinux OS 9. #898

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Oracle Linux 8. #899

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on Oracle Linux 9. #899

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on VMware Photon OS 4. #900

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on VMware Photon OS 5. #900

• Adds option to enable cloud-init on SUSE Enterprise Linux 15. #910

Chore:

• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 9.4 release. #925
• Updates Oracle Linux 9 to 9.4 release. #927
• Updates Almalinux 9 to 9.4 release. #927
• Updates Rocky Linux 9 to 9.4 release. #927
• Removes CentOS Stream 8 from the project.

Note

On 31 May 2024, CentOS Stream 8 reached the end of life.

• Removes Ubuntu Server 23.10 from the project; superseded by 24.04 LTS. #891
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.3.0.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.8.3.
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.8.1.
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/hcp to >= 0.89.0.
• Update ansible-core version from 2.15 to 2.16. #921

Full Changelog:

v0.19.0...v0.20.0

v0.19.1

Release Date: 2024-04-15

Bug Fix:

• Removes the PowerShell provisioner for Windows 11 and 10 as it's not required after the transition to Ansible. #875

Full Changelog:

v0.19.0...v0.19.1

v0.19.0

Release Date: 2024-04-09

Enhancement:

• Adds templates and unit tests for managing custom network and storage configurations for Linux distributions. #473, #805
• Adds additional configuration to install packages for Linux distributions. #800
• Adds option to set a specified number of remaining CD-ROMs for a machine images added in packer-plugin-vsphere v1.2.4. #836
• Adds use of evaluation versions for Windows Server 2025, 2022, and 2019 images, by default. Keys are still supported. #844
• Adds use of evaluation versions for Windows 11 and 10 images, by default. Keys are still supported. #844
• Adds Windows Server 2025 Insiders Preview. #834
• Adds Ansible integration for Windows Server 2025, 2022, and 2019 images. #801
• Adds Ansible integration for Windows 11 and 10 images. #801
• Adds option to enable a content library to source all guest operating system ISOs or use a datastore path. Defaults to false, disabled.
  Set common_iso_content_library_enabled to true to enable use of a content library for all guest operating system ISOs.
• Adds option to enable a content library for the placement of virtual machine images builds. Defaults to true, enabled.
  Set common_content_library_enabled to false to disable use of a content library for saving virtual machine image builds.

Refactor:

• Refactors the Ubuntu builds not to use cloud-init, by default. #843
  Set vm_guest_os_cloudinit to true to enable cloud-init on the machine image.

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.10.0.
  #828
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.2.7. #824, #871, #873
• Updates required_plugins for ethanmdavidson/packer-plugin-git to >= 0.6.2. #868
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.7.1. #829
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.7.0. #866
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/hcp to >= 0.84.1. #867
• Updates Gomplate to 3.11.7. #825
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 9.3 release. #819
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to 8.9 release. #818
• Updates AlmaLinux 9 to 9.3 release. #817
• Updates AlmaLinux 8 to 8.9 release. #817
• Updates Rocky Linux 9 to 9.3 release. #823
• Updates Rocky Linux 8 to 8.9 release. #822
• Updates Oracle Linux 9 to 9.3 release. #821
• Updates Oracle Linux 8 to 8.9 release. #820
• Updates Debian 12 to 12.5 release. #865
• Updates Debian 11 to 11.9 release. #864
• Updates Ubuntu 22.04 to 22.04.4 release. #863
• Updates AlmaLinux to upgrade the almalinux-release package during the build.

New Contributors:

• @alcorwalter made their first contribution in #805

Full Changelog:

v0.18.0...v0.19.0

v0.18.0

Note

Release Date: 2023-10-23
Previous Versioning: v23.11

Enhancement:

• Adds VMware Photon OS 5.0 to the project. #582
• Adds Debian 12 to the project. #584
• Adds Oracle Linux 9 to the project. #670
• Adds Oracle Linux 8 to the project. #670
• Adds Windows 11 Enterprise to the project. #688
• Adds Windows 10 Enterprise to the project. #688
• Adds the option to configure the following target for builds: #471
  • a vSphere cluster with Distributed Resource Scheduling enabled. (Default)
  • an ESXi host in vSphere cluster with Distributed Resource Scheduling disabled. (Override)
  • an ESXi host not in a vSphere cluster. (Override)
• Adds a development container for Visual Studio Code. #700
• Adds an example .gitlab.yml file for GitLab CI/CD. #675
• Adds a build-ci.tmpl that can be used to create or update the .gitlab-ci.yml file using gomplate. #675
• Adds Packer logging settings to set-envvars.sh. #705
• Adds a debug option (--debug or -d) to./build.sh to enable debug logging for Packer. #706

Bugfix:

• Updates Debian 11 to include build_password in the linux-debian.pkr.hcl configuration file. #653
• Updates Debian 11 to ensure /dev/sr1 is not mounted with use of the default http data source. No changes to the disk data source. #686

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.9.4. #718

• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.2.1. #564

• Updates required_plugins for ethanmdavidson/packer-plugin-git to >= 0.4.3. #717

• Updates required_plugins for rgl/packer-plugin-windows-update to >= 0.14.3. #565

• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.6.0. #757

• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/vsphere to >= 2.5.1. #758

• Updates Gomplate to 3.11.5. #559

• Updates ansible-core to 2.15. #573

• Updates Debian 11 to 11.8 release. #738

• Updates Ubuntu 22.04 to 22.04.3 release. #720

• Updates Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.04.6 release. #566

• Removes Ubuntu 18.04 from the project. #578

  On 31 May 2023, Ubuntu 18.04 LTS reached the end of standard support. See
  Ubuntu Lifecycle for more information.

• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 9.2 release. #576, #587

• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to 8.8 release. #577

• Updates Almalinux 9 to 9.2 release. #569

• Updates Almalinux 8 to 8.8 release. #570

• Updates Rocky Linux 9 to 9.2 release. #571

• Updates Rocky Linux 8 to 8.8 release. #572

• Updates CentOS Stream 9 to latest June 2023 release. #567

• Updates CentOS Stream 8 to latest June 2023 release. #568

• Updates SLES 15 to 15.5 release. #740

• Updates Windows Server 2022 to October 2023 (US English) release. #744

• Updates Windows 11 22H2 to October 2023 (US English) release. #743

• Updates Windows 10 22H2 to October 2023 (US English) release. #742

Refactor:

• Removes the use of iso_checksum and iso_checksum_type as they are not needed since the ISOs
  are not being downloaded by the plugin and are expected to be present and already verified by the
  user after download. #722
• Removes the installation of Chocolatey from the Microsoft Windows guest operating system builds. #586

New Contributors:

• @DavidRobson made their first contribution in #771

Full Changelog:

v23.10...v0.18.0

v0.17.0

Note

Release Date: 2023-10-23
Previous Versioning: v23.10

Enhancement:

• Adds support for disabling password expiration for the local administrator account on localized (non-English) Windows guest operating systems. #334.
• Adds support for enabling Remote Desktop on localized (non-English) Windows guest operating systems. #335.
• Adds support to allow SSH authentication with RSA keys for Ansible, if necessary. Adds a note related to OpenSSH >= 9.0 in the documentation. #387.

Bugfix:

• Fixes missing privileges for the custom role in vSphere that effected the ability to build using disk-based deployment modes and Windows 11 22H2 with vTPM. #295, #339, #340
• Updates the URI in user-data.pkrtpl.hcl for Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 to remove the country code. This will help to ensure that GeoIP lookup works for all users. #421
• Updates the install commands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to use the correct EPEL repository version. #440

Documentation:

• Updates options to download a release or clone the project. #385
• Updates syntax to append RSA algorithm to HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa and PubKeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa. #386
• Updates the ssh-keygen example for generating the ECDSA public key to use a 521 bit key length. Valid key lengths are 256, 384, or 521. #439

Refactor:

• Refactors builds to use the current Git branch / tag as the build_version local variable used for virtual machine image names and descriptions. #385
• Refactors Ansible roles to remove the warn: false args for ansible-core 2.14 compatibility. #443

New Contributors:

• @tintinhamans made their first contribution in #476
• @username-is-already-taken2 made their first contribution in #492
• @roshankathawate made their first contribution in #653
• @necarnot made their first contribution in #686
• @virtualistic made their first contribution in #670

Full Changelog: v0.16.0...v0.17.0

v0.16.0

Note

Release Date: 2023-01-17
Previous Versioning: v23.01

Enhancement:

• Adds support for disabling password expiration for the local administrator account on localized (non-English) Windows guest operating systems. #334.
• Adds support for enabling Remote Desktop on localized (non-English) Windows guest operating systems. #335.
• Adds support to allow SSH authentication with RSA keys for Ansible, if necessary. Adds a note related to OpenSSH >= 9.0 in the documentation. #387.

Bugfix:

• Fixes missing privileges for the custom role in vSphere that effected the ability to build using disk-based deployment modes and Windows 11 22H2 with vTPM. #295, #339, #340
• Updates the URI in user-data.pkrtpl.hcl for Ubuntu 20.04 and 22.04 to remove the country code. This will help to ensure that GeoIP lookup works for all users. #421
• Updates the install commands for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to use the correct EPEL repository version. #440

Documentation:

• Updates options to download a release or clone the project. #385
• Updates syntax to append RSA algorithm to HostKeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa and PubKeyAcceptedAlgorithms +ssh-rsa. #386
• Updates the ssh-keygen example for generating the ECDSA public key to use a 521 bit key length. Valid key lengths are 256, 384, or 521. #439

Refactor:

• Refactors builds to use the current Git branch / tag as the build_version local variable used for virtual machine image names and descriptions. #385
• Refactors Ansible roles to remove the warn: false args for ansible-core 2.14 compatibility. #443

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.8.5. #423
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.1.1. #416
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.3.7. #456
• Updates required_versions for hashicorp/hcp to >= 0.51.0. #408, #409, #410, #411, #412, #413, #414, #415
• Updates Gomplate to 3.11.3. #380, #382
• Updates Debian 11 to 11.6 release. #432
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 to 9.1 release. #366
• Updates Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 to 8.7 release. #365
• Updates Rocky Linux 9 to 9.1 release. #381
• Updates Rocky Linux 8 to 8.7 release. #368
• Updates Almalinux 9 to 9.1 release. #362
• Updates Almalinux 8 to 8.7 release. #361
• Updates CentOS Stream 9 to latest December 2022 release. #454
• Updates CentOS Stream 8 to latest December 2022 release. #453
• Updates Windows Server 2022 to December 2022 (US English) release. #452
• Updates Windows Server 2019 to November 2022 (US English) release. #373
• Updates Windows 11 22H2 to December 2022 (US English) release.#451
• Updates Windows 10 22H2 to December 2022 (US English) release. #450
• Removes Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (x86_64) and macOS.
• Big Sur (Intel) as tested operating systems for the Packer host. #393

Breaking Change:

• Removes support to use the iso_url variable to download the guest operating system .iso from a URL introduced in #249 due to #343. #435

New Contributors:

• @aseques made their first contribution in #380
• @keys1234249 made their first contribution in #440
• @sophware made their first contribution in #439

Full Changelog:

v0.15.0...v0.16.0

v0.15.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-09-28
Previous Versioning: v22.09

Enhancement:

• Adds support for disk-based deployment mode for Debian 11. #272.
• Adds support for disk-based deployment mode for SLES 15. #276

Bugfix:

• Fixes mismatches in source names for Windows Server when only builds for Standard or Datacenter
  are launched using ./build.sh. #281

Chore:

• Updates Debian 11 to 11.5.0 release. #273
• Updates Ubuntu 22.04 to 22.04.1 release/ #274
• Updates Ubuntu 20.04 to 20.04.5 release. #275
• Updates SLES 15 to 15.4 release.#287
• Updates Windows Server 2022 to September 2022 (US English) release. #282
• Updates Windows 11 to 22H2 September 2022 (US English) release. #284
• Updates Windows 10 to 21H2 September 2022 (US English) release. #283
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.3.1. #292

New Contributors:

• @ukushisanet made their first contribution in #272
• @joisika made their first contribution in #290

Full Changelog:

v0.14.0...v0.15.0

v0.14.0

Note

Release Date: 2022-08-25
Previous Versioning: v22.08

Enhancement:

• Adds Debian 11. #195
• Adds support for initial configuration and use of the HCP Packer Registry. #236 and #256
• Adds support to use the iso_url variable to download the guest operating system .iso from a URL. #249

Breaking Change:

• Updates vm_cpu_sockets to vm_cpu_count for CPUs. The value of the sockets is determined by dividing the number of CPUs by the number of cores per socket defined. #253

Chore:

• Updates required_versions for packer to >= 1.8.3.
• Updates required_plugins for packer-plugin-vsphere to >= 1.0.8.
• Updates required_versions for terraform to >= 1.2.8.
• Updates Windows Server 2022 to August 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates Windows 11 to August 2022 (US English) release.
• Updates Windows 10 to August 2022 (US English) release.

Full Changelog:

v0.13.0...v0.14.0