Optionally

pass generate packer/debian-921-amd64-netinst/debian 16

export PACKER_DEBIAN_PASSWD="$(pass packer/debian-921-amd64-netinst/debian)" # or
export PACKER_DEBIAN_PASSWD="$(pwgen -N1 16)"
make -C debian-921-amd64-netinst force build FULL=1

Will build a base debian-9.2.1 image (default to ~/packer/debian-921-amd64-netinst-base) from debian-9.2.1-amd64-netinst.iso using a modified stretch example preseed file and a modified partman-auto/text/multi_scheme extracted from partman-auto_137_amd64.udeb

• The vmware-iso builder is used
• A system group sudo-nopasswd is created
• A /etc/sudoers.d/sudo-nopasswd file allowing members of sudo-nopasswd to sudo without password is added
• A debian user with UID 999 and password $PACKER_DEBIAN_PASSWD is created and added to group sudo-nopasswd

On my debian9 workstation

• Gnu Make 4.1
• GPP 2.24
• Python 2.7.13
• jq-1.5rc2-171-g6f9646a
• packer 1.0.4
• VMware Player 12.5.7 build-5813279

export PACKER_DEBIAN_PASSWD="$(pass packer/debian-921-amd64-netinst/debian)"
make -C debian-921-epi force build FULL=1

Will build a debian-921-epi images from debian-921-amd64-netinst-base

• The debian-921-amd64-netinst-base is first converted to ova
• Then the virtualbox-ovf builder is used
• open-vm-tools is installed
• ansible is installed to allow using ansible-local provisioners
• A users.yml playbook is used to created team users using their public key from github.com
• Finally debian-921-epi is converted from ova to vmx

On my debian9 workstation

• VMware ovftool 4.1.0 (build-3634792)
• VirtualBox Version 5.1.30 r118389 (Qt5.7.1)

Granted we first used pass to obscure private data about the vcenter config

export image=debian-921-epi
export i=packer/$image

export ova=~/$i/packer-$image.vmx

export      ds=$(pass $i/ds)
export     net=$(pass $i/net)
export    user=$(pass $i/vc/user)
export    pass=$(pass $i/vc/pass)
export vcenter=$(pass $i/vc/node)
export cluster=$(pass $i/vc/cluster)

ovftool --X:logToConsole=True --X:logLevel="verbose" --acceptAllEulas \
        -ds=$ds -dm=thin --net:nat=$net $ova \
        "vi://$user:$pass@$vcenter/$cluster"

Or more concisely make -C debian-921-epi push

To ease later provisioning steps you can also

make -C debian-921-epi run     # show how to run image
# run image
make -C debian-921-epi ansible # generate debian-921-epi/ansible/hosts.yml
(cd debian-921-epi/ansible; ansible-playbook playbook.yml)

Obviously more ansible provisioning and/or more derived images could easily be added and may not be documented here