esxi salt-proxy fails with errors (__salt__ is not defined) causes failure

[dfidler]

I've setup an esxi proxy using the saltext modules and it's getting constant errors per the following:

# salt-proxy --proxyid esxi_cluster1_esx01
[CRITICAL] Failed to load grains defined in grain file esxi.esxi in function <LoadedFunc name='esxi.esxi'>, error:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/salt/loader/__init__.py", line 943, in grains
    ret = funcs[key](**kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/salt/loader/lazy.py", line 149, in __call__
    return self.loader.run(run_func, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/salt/loader/lazy.py", line 1201, in run
    return self._last_context.run(self._run_as, _func_or_method, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/salt/loader/lazy.py", line 1216, in _run_as
    return _func_or_method(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/saltext/vmware/grains/esxi.py", line 37, in esxi
    return _grains()
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/saltext/vmware/grains/esxi.py", line 95, in _grains
    username, password = _find_credentials(host)
  File "/usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/saltext/vmware/grains/esxi.py", line 75, in _find_credentials
    ret = __salt__["vmware_info.system_info"](
NameError: name '__salt__' is not defined

In looking at other grains modules I can see them using salt but I'm guessing that the salt-proxy isn't LazyLoading modules before the grains module (just a guess) executes. If I remove the whole grains module directory

mv /usr/lib/python3.7/site-packages/saltext/vmware/grains /root

I am getting verify_ssl errors (not surprising as the hosts are using self-signed certs, which I think i just need to set the credential_store param in the esxi proxy config or set verify_ssl somewhere.

Either way, once I remove the grains module I get further. That makes a degree of sense because the esxi proxy minion offers a grains method natively, which this grains module seems to be replicating.