Packer Plugin Verda

Note

This is an unofficial implementation. Probably not production ready yet.

packer-plugin-verda provides a Packer builder for Verda Cloud.

The verda-instance builder creates a Verda instance, waits for it to become reachable, runs provisioners, and returns either the created instance or a cloned OS volume artifact.

Uses the official verdacloud-sdk-go and works in tandem with the terraform-provider-verda.

Installation

packer {
  required_plugins {
    verda = {
      version = ">= 0.1.0"
      source  = "github.com/thevilledev/verda"
    }
  }
}

Then run:

packer init .

For local development or private repositories, install the built binary directly:

make plugin-install

Usage

Set credentials with VERDA_CLIENT_ID and VERDA_CLIENT_SECRET, or pass client_id and client_secret in the source block.

source "verda-instance" "ubuntu" {
  instance_type = "1L40S.20V"
  location_code = "FIN-03"
  image         = "ubuntu-24.04"
  hostname      = "packer-verda-example"

  ssh_username = "root"
}

build {
  sources = ["source.verda-instance.ubuntu"]

  provisioner "shell" {
    inline = [
      "cloud-init status --wait || true",
      "uname -a",
    ]
  }
}

To run the temporary build instance as spot capacity, set is_spot = true or contract = "SPOT" in the source block. See examples/spot.pkr.hcl for a minimal spot build.

To produce a reusable OS volume instead of an instance artifact, set artifact_type = "os_volume". The artifact ID can then be used as the Verda instance image value in Terraform or another API client.

Multi-location OS volume builds print every location and volume ID. The OS volume example also writes VolumeIDsByLocation to packer-manifest.json for machine-readable handoff.

The default instance artifact remains live after a successful build. If Packer later destroys that artifact, the plugin deletes the instance; set keep_instance = true to retain it even then. For OS volume artifacts, the temporary build instance is deleted after capture unless keep_instance is enabled.

Note

This step requires extra steps - see examples/README.md.

When you deploy from an existing Verda OS volume, do not rely on deployment-time ssh_key_ids injection. Bake durable login keys into the guest during the Packer build, as shown in examples/os-volume.pkr.hcl, and use ssh_clear_authorized_keys = true so Packer's temporary build key is removed before the volume is captured.

Documentation

• Builder reference: docs/builders/instance.mdx
• Examples: examples/basic.pkr.hcl, examples/spot.pkr.hcl, examples/os-volume.pkr.hcl

The option reference is generated from the builder config comments with packer-sdc, matching the pattern used by other Packer plugins.

Development

make tidy-check
make check-fmt
make generate
make test
make lint
make plugin-check

make generate updates generated HCL2 specs and the HashiCorp integration-ready .web-docs output.

Render the docs locally with:

make renderdocs

Build the GitHub Pages site input with:

make docs-site

Run cloud acceptance tests only when you intentionally want to create real Verda resources:

PACKER_ACC=1 \
VERDA_CLIENT_ID=... \
VERDA_CLIENT_SECRET=... \
VERDA_ACC_INSTANCE_TYPE=... \
VERDA_ACC_IMAGE=... \
make testacc

Release

Releases are built with GoReleaser and use Packer plugin archive naming:

make snapshot

Tagged releases require GPG_PRIVATE_KEY and GPG_PASSPHRASE GitHub secrets so the checksum file can be signed.

License

MIT.