This plugin pre-dates "instance clone" - when it was written, vSphere didn't support it. Linked clones was about as close as you'd get (and even that is tricky).
To do this, we'd need to work out
- if this isn't just sales-hype re-describing what a linked clone is already
- if there's anyone willing and able to implement this
- if the yavijava library supports the API calls required
After that, I'd guess the design process would be to determine:
- what configuration data the Jenkins plugin would need for this use case
- how best to distinguish between "clone from template" and "instant clone" in the configuration UI
- if we'd also need different build steps to support it (e.g. we've got "template to vm" and "vm to template" but would we also need new stuff for "instant clones"?)
- how best to "plug in" to the existing "create a new VM on demand" functionality when the configuration is set to "instant clone".
Having someone both willing and able to do it is key tho' - this is free software; it isn't anyone's "job" to implement features that other people are asking for; if you need it, you learn everything you need to learn to do that, and do it yourself (or you pay someone else to do that).
Improvement
Minor
This plugin pre-dates "instance clone" - when it was written, vSphere didn't support it. Linked clones was about as close as you'd get (and even that is tricky).
To do this, we'd need to work out
After that, I'd guess the design process would be to determine:
Having someone both willing and able to do it is key tho' - this is free software; it isn't anyone's "job" to implement features that other people are asking for; if you need it, you learn everything you need to learn to do that, and do it yourself (or you pay someone else to do that).