Incorporating Chocolatey into the provisioning dialogs

Developers
#1

Hi Folks,

So I was wondering if it’s possible and what would be the best way to incorporate Chocolatey into the VM provisioning dialogs. Chocolatey for those who don’t know is like apt-get for windows. It uses powershell to install applications on Windows machines.

Use case example:
User deploys template, selects all the normal provisioning questions - a final tab asks them what software would you like installed. This is a list from the Chocolatey website and after provisioning will run the powercli commands to install the software.

#2

Great question - I would ask @bronaghs - she’s the resident MSFT tech expert.

#3

The provisioning dialogs are not very customizable so this might be something more suited for service dialogs where you could provide a list or use a dynamic control to get values at runtime. Then you could pass the data as part of a sysprep configuration file or make powershell calls using WinRM as described here during post-provisioning steps: http://talk.manageiq.org/t/remotely-run-powershell-scripts-within-automate-using-winrm/253

The one place in the provisioning dialogs where you might be able to do this is by using the “VM Description” field and allowing the user to enter package names there that get processed by the automate script. The description for the field could be changed so the UI shows different text but the data would still be captured in the :vm_description key in the options hash for the request/task.

      :vm_description:
        :description: Chocolatey Package names
        :required: false
        :display: :edit
        :data_type: :string
        :min_length: 
        :max_length: 100