Debug mode user interaction only after failure

[queglay]

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Description

-Debug mode and having to hit enter line by line to get to just before the point of failure in a long build is more cumbersome than it could be, it requires to much manual interaction that is often totally unnecessary. I'd love to see an arg / mode that runs the build until a non zero exit code/exception occurs and provide a log in shell to probe the instance state only after the point of failure. This would speed up debugging and probing the instance state more rapidly than otherwise and we could more quickly iterate on our builds. Perhaps another not so great but still good alternative would be not not terminate the instance on failure, and the user could jump in themselves at that point.

Use Case(s)

Anytime there is a build issue that needs to be determined.

[lbajolet-hashicorp]

Hi @queglay,

Sorry for the late answer, I got sidetracked on that.

Regarding your problem, there are two possible solutions:

• breakpoint provisioner: the breakpoint provisioner essentially provides a point at which you can arbitrarily stop the build process to debug your build. This would perfectly suit a case like the first one you mention, where you know when to stop.

• -on-error flag: the on-error flag lets you manipulate the behaviour of Packer when a problem occurs. By default it'll clean-up the resources, but you can change it (see packer build --help for the complete list). ask might be what you're looking for in this case, so when the build fails you can then jump-in and run any number of commands to help you debug.

Please let me know if these do not fit your situation, they suit most of the debugging needs of Packer users, but they're not perfect and it's always interesting to know if there's anything we can do to improve the experience, we can all benefit from this.

Thanks

[nywilken]

Hi there :wave:, I'm going to close this issue since there hasn't been any updates to it. But if you are still running into issues please feel free to leave a comment on the issue and we will gladly reopen.

[github-actions[bot]]

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