The HashiCorp Packer team is excited to announce the release of Data Source, a new component type to fetch or compute data for use elsewhere in a Packer configuration. Starting with Packer 1.7.0, users and plugin developers will utilize data source plugins within HCL2-enabled build templates, as legacy JSON templates are phased out in favor of HCL2. Data sources function similarly to Terraform's data sources, fetching external data and providing detailed information about it for use in the Packer configuration. Two initial data sources, Amazon AMI and Amazon Secrets Manager, have been included in this release, with additional ones planned for future updates, including Consul and Vault. Users can leverage data sources as local variables to access their values and versions, and developers can create custom data sources by following specific instructions. The goal of introducing data sources is to improve stability and flexibility in Packer configurations.