cloud-init package dependencies

[Garrett Holmstrom]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 4:38 PM, Matthew Miller
<mattdm at fedoraproject.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 04:27:45PM -0800, Garrett Holmstrom wrote:
>> > You can ask for that user-data file more than once, though. It'd be kind of
>> > nice if *that* listed the plugins needed.
>> You might actually be able to do that now, but cloud-init doesn't yet
>> have a way to install plugins that are missing.  If that gets
>> implemented then this becomes easy!  :-)
>
> What about a service that runs before cloud-init itself, scans the user-data
> for needed plugins, and then yum-installs them if they're missing?
>
> It woudn't have to be that smart -- if it hit something complicated, it
> could just throw up its hands and install the whole shebang.
>
> The primary downside I can see is that it's probably slower to do that than
> to just have it all there.

That isn't going to work for every case, but it sounds like a great
"90%" starting point.  Maybe a little script could read user-data, and
if it contains cloud-config data, the script reads that and takes
action on the bits that it has to.

What do you folks think?  Anyone itching to give it a try?