vmware_guest_sendkey: handle special keys in string_send and other improvements

[msilveirabr]

SUMMARY

After using hashicorp packer for a while, I got used to the boot_command way of handling sendkeys. After learning about the sendkey module for ansible community.vmware, I missed the packer style... So i decided to keep string_send for backward compatibility, create the strings_send param as a list of strings. Then added handling of key vars like ENTER -> <ENTER> , ESC -> <ESC> Escaping is supported: \<WAIT> \<ESC> , etc

Another improvement is changind sleep_time from int to float to allow fractions of seconds

Special note about this string "\<WAIT> A<TAB\<TAB>asdf> \<TAB<ENTER>A>" The first part of "\<TAB<ENTER>A>" Will output as "\<TAB" intead of "<TAB". I wasn't able to debug for a fix in the regex.

ISSUE TYPE

• Docs Pull Request
• Feature Pull Request

COMPONENT NAME

vmware_guest_sendkey

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Example:

- name: "Send keystrokes to VM"
  community.vmware.vmware_guest_sendkey:
    hostname: "{{ vsphere_hostname }}"
    username: "{{ vsphere_username }}"
    password: "{{ vsphere_password }}"
    validate_certs: false
    folder: "{{ vsphere_datacenter }}/vm"
    name: "{{ dest_vm }}"
    sleep_time: 0.1 #This patch allows float values here
    string_send: "TESTING<ENTER>" #Prepended to the strings_send list
    strings_send:
      - "<ESC>:1,$d<ENTER>iA tab<TAB>y<WAIT0><ENTER>" #Testing on an open vim instance
      - "\\<WAIT> A<TAB\\<TAB>asdf> \\<TAB<ENTER>A>" #Possibly bugged string
      - "TESTING<WAIT><ENTER>"
      - "TABBING<TAB>WORKS<WAIT><ENTER>"
    keys_send:
    - <TAB>
    - <ENTER>
  delegate_to: localhost

[softwarefactory-project-zuul[bot]]

Build failed.

:x: ansible-tox-linters FAILURE in 3m 58s :heavy_check_mark: build-ansible-collection SUCCESS in 4m 19s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-devel FAILURE in 9m 22s (non-voting) :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-milestone FAILURE in 10m 24s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.11 FAILURE in 10m 00s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.12 FAILURE in 9m 15s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python27 SUCCESS in 5m 06s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python36 SUCCESS in 5m 48s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python37 SUCCESS in 6m 31s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python38 SUCCESS in 6m 23s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_only-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 19m 50s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_2esxi-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 20m 00s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_1_of_2 SUCCESS in 1h 01m 41s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_2_of_2 SUCCESS in 42m 00s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-galaxy-importer SUCCESS in 5m 24s

[softwarefactory-project-zuul[bot]]

Build failed.

:x: ansible-tox-linters FAILURE in 4m 23s :heavy_check_mark: build-ansible-collection SUCCESS in 5m 43s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-devel FAILURE in 9m 43s (non-voting) :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-milestone FAILURE in 13m 51s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.11 FAILURE in 11m 43s :x: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.12 FAILURE in 10m 02s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python27 SUCCESS in 4m 26s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python36 SUCCESS in 6m 09s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python37 SUCCESS in 5m 04s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python38 SUCCESS in 5m 40s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_only-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 20m 49s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_2esxi-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 19m 36s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_1_of_2 SUCCESS in 1h 02m 22s :x: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_2_of_2 FAILURE in 12m 04s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-galaxy-importer SUCCESS in 4m 02s

[softwarefactory-project-zuul[bot]]

Build failed.

:heavy_check_mark: ansible-tox-linters SUCCESS in 4m 02s :heavy_check_mark: build-ansible-collection SUCCESS in 4m 07s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-devel SUCCESS in 9m 18s (non-voting) :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-milestone SUCCESS in 9m 27s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.11 SUCCESS in 10m 49s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.12 SUCCESS in 8m 19s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python27 SUCCESS in 6m 39s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python36 SUCCESS in 5m 18s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python37 SUCCESS in 5m 10s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python38 SUCCESS in 7m 02s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_only-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 20m 28s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_2esxi-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 17m 18s :x: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_1_of_2 FAILURE in 13m 20s :x: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_2_of_2 FAILURE in 17m 05s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-galaxy-importer SUCCESS in 5m 49s

[mariolenz]

recheck

[softwarefactory-project-zuul[bot]]

Build succeeded.

:heavy_check_mark: ansible-tox-linters SUCCESS in 4m 01s :heavy_check_mark: build-ansible-collection SUCCESS in 4m 32s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-devel SUCCESS in 11m 52s (non-voting) :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-milestone SUCCESS in 10m 06s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.11 SUCCESS in 10m 49s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-sanity-docker-stable-2.12 SUCCESS in 10m 00s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python27 SUCCESS in 5m 42s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python36 SUCCESS in 6m 06s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python37 SUCCESS in 5m 34s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-units-community-vmware-python38 SUCCESS in 5m 07s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_only-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 20m 48s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_2esxi-python36-stable211 SUCCESS in 18m 25s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_1_of_2 SUCCESS in 1h 02m 46s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-test-cloud-integration-vcenter7_1esxi-python36-stable211_2_of_2 SUCCESS in 43m 57s :heavy_check_mark: ansible-galaxy-importer SUCCESS in 4m 19s

[msilveirabr]

Do I need to do something else, or just wait for an approval/merge of the feature?

[mariolenz]

@msilveirabr It looks like there are several people working on this module at the moment. There are also PRs #1390 and #1414.

So I suggest you, @jason-neumann and @ziegenberg join forces.