Document gathering custom data with the local datagatherer

[j-fuentes]

Currently Preflight has a set of built-in datagatherers. This is a limitation, because if someone wants to create a new package but doesn't have a datagatherer that provides the information for it, the only option is to write Go code and create a new datagatherer. This might not be ideal for some people.

Ideally, there should be a way of plug into Preflight any external data provided from an arbitrary process or file or whatever that is generic.

[charlieegan3]

I fear that this isn't clear enough in its current form. I'd like to see this refined in scope, e.g. are we talking files, are we talking http etc. Ideally this would be driven by a use case.

E.g. I have an API and I connect to it and collect data in 'this' way.

I also feel that this is low priority until we're working on custom packages (which is not a priority right now)

[wwwil]

We do have a local files data gatherer which is very generic. While hacky this can be combined with curl other commands to get data to Preflight. I feel this works well enough for experimentation, and if we had a real use case come up then we could go ahead and build something better. We should probably explain this in the data gatherers documentation though and ask users to open an issue/contact us so we know when there is demand.

[charlieegan3]

👍 I like the idea of cutting this back to documenting the process for requesting a new datagatherer.

[j-fuentes]

I think local for data-gatherers covers this use case. (As wwwil said)

[charlieegan3]

I updated the title. I think we leave this open?