Allow User to set VM extraConfig values during provisioning

[agrare]

It is possible to set extraConfig values for a new VM in the VirtualMachineConfigSpec prior to CloneVM_Task.

The config spec is built by this method https://github.com/ManageIQ/manageiq-providers-vmware/blob/master/app/models/manageiq/providers/vmware/infra_manager/provision/configuration/container.rb#L2-L52

It would be beneficial to allow the user to provide extraConfig key=value pairs to set on the new vm

[MajorDallas]

I'm keen to take a look (despite being new to Ruby), but from a brief look at the linked code and the available data types for provisioning dialog elements I think there's a separate feature that would be helpful if built first: dialog elements that are collections.

It's not strictly necessary, but as I understand things right now:

Without either a mapping or a list of 2-lists, the administrator must add a dialog field for every extraConfig kv pair they anticipate ever being needed. extraConfig itself allows arbitrary keys in the guestInfo namespace (and, I think, just arbitrary keys period). Cloud-init, for example, makes use of guestInfo keys that vSphere assigns no meaning to but serve as the transport for getting cloud-init data from vSphere into the guest prior to v7u3 (and just so happens to be my use-case). This might be desirable in many situations, eg. to prevent users from adding dysfunctional or malicious settings. Maybe even for the majority of cases, this is a sufficient arrangement.

In order to match the arbitrariness of extraConfig, however, get_option(:extra_confg).each |key, val| ... needs to be possible, and that requires dialog elements that contain multiple values.

Well, I can imagine a middle-ground. A string value could always be a CSV list or similar and parsed accordingly. Maybe this is done for some dialog element somewhere already?