Clone VMs with utmctl

[nre-ableton]

I did look in the backlog for this, and was surprised to see it hadn't been mentioned yet (apologies if I've missed something). As far as I can tell, it's not possible to create new clones via the CLI. For an unattended CI system (for example), that makes UTM unusable.

It would be really nice if I could make clones with utmctl. Or, if there is a workaround, such as copying the files in ~/Library/Containers/com.utmapp.UTM/Data/Documents and somehow registering the VM with UTM so that it would show up in utmctl list etc.

[greeneg]

Basic deletion functionality would also be appreciated as well in furtherance of making UTM a valid tool for CI as well

[ideologysec]

@nre-ableton you could conceivably clone it via cp or other operations, and then call open on the bundle path to register it (which will launch it in UTM)

[osy]

FYI: As of v4.2.2, there is support for clone and creating new VM using the scripting interface. utmctl has not been updated yet.

[greeneg]

FYI: As of v4.2.2, there is support for clone and creating new VM using the scripting interface. utmctl has not been updated yet.

Can you point me to docs for the scripting interface? I'm looking at hacking up a vagrant plugin to use utm instead of vBox to get local development working again for my team (M1 hw, but our target OS is x86_64)

[ideologysec]

@greeneg open the Script Editor app, File -> Open Dictionary -> UTM.app

[osy]

hashicorp/vagrant#12518 (comment)

[max-wittig]

Thanks!

[max-wittig]

@greeneg We're using this applescript to be able to use UTM inside CI for deletion as a workaround:

on run argv
	tell application "UTM"
	    set vm_name to item 1 of argv
		delete virtual machine named vm_name
		log "Deleted '" & vm_name & "'"
	end tell
end run

osascript ${currentDir}/delete.oascript vm-name