Is it possible to run pulumi new against a template on the file system (as opposed to a repository or canned template)? I found the PULUMI_TEMPLATE_LOCATION environment variable in source, but I can't figure out how to use it... or if it's even supposed to be used.

You can use

pulumi new ~/path/to/template

to create a project from a local template.

Am i mistaken, or does this have to be an absolute path?

Good question and I don't know off the top of my head.

interesting. ~ makes sense because it autoexpands, but ../ is surprising. im on osx too, but i a devcontainer on ubuntu. incidentally, im set, i can figure out my path 😉