Mishandling of symlinks

[combatpoodle]

Working with the Docker communicator tonight I found that there's a false dichotomy in a few spots regarding file treatment since symlinks aren't considered. The Docker one should be fixed in the PR mentioned below.

It looks a similar issue was resolved in the SSH communicator in #449; but there's another copy in the file provisioner at provisioner/file/provisioner.go, lines 80-90:

    info, err := os.Stat(p.config.Source)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    // If we're uploading a directory, short circuit and do that
    if info.IsDir() {
        return comm.UploadDir(p.config.Destination, p.config.Source, nil)
    }

    // We're uploading a file...
    f, err := os.Open(p.config.Source)
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }
    defer f.Close()

    fi, err := f.Stat()
    if err != nil {
        return err
    }

    err = comm.Upload(p.config.Destination, f, &fi)

I'm mixed on how to resolve that one without soiling interfaces and am a bit short on time ATM - would someone else have time to pick it up?

Thanks!

[bezidejni]

I'm not completely sure, but I may be running into the same problem when trying to build an image using a docker builder and ansible-local provisioner:

Build log
Folder in question

[benpatterson]

I'm running into this issue as well.

FWIW, I rebased #1628 on master and it now passes in Travis: https://travis-ci.org/benpatterson/packer/builds/40790013.

[bkeroackdsc]

I'm running into this with the Ansible provisioner and Docker builder. Our playbooks contain symlinks which do not appear to be followed when copying into the container.

EDIT: This would be a major advantage of Packer over Dockerfiles, since they refuse to follow symlinks (moby/moby#1676)

[arturhoo]

I am having the same problem when Ansible files are copied over to the machine: symlinks aren't followed.

EDIT: my issue was fixed by #1766

[mitchellh]

I think the PRs fixed the specific issues. As we find more please open an issue.