During November 2024, Morgan Grogan developed a new strcontains function for the hashicorp/packer repository’s HCL2Template component, enabling substring checks within template configurations. Morgan implemented this feature in Go, focusing on robust string manipulation and seamless integration with the existing template engine. The work included comprehensive unit testing to ensure reliability and maintainability, as well as registering the new function within the HCL2 function registry. By extending HCL2Template’s capabilities, Morgan reduced configuration complexity for users and improved template expressiveness. The depth of the implementation demonstrated careful attention to code quality, test coverage, and alignment with the project’s architectural standards.