- Website: https://www.packer.io
- IRC:
#packer-tool
on Freenode - Mailing list: Google Groups
Packer is a tool for building identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.
Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer comes out of the box with support for the following platforms:
- Amazon EC2 (AMI). Both EBS-backed and instance-store AMIs
- DigitalOcean
- Docker
- Google Compute Engine
- OpenStack
- Parallels
- QEMU. Both KVM and Xen images.
- VirtualBox
- VMware
Support for other platforms can be added via plugins.
The images that Packer creates can easily be turned into Vagrant boxes.
Note: There is a great introduction and getting started guide for those with a bit more patience. Otherwise, the quick start below will get you up and running quickly, at the sacrifice of not explaining some key points.
First, download a pre-built Packer binary for your operating system or compile Packer yourself.
After Packer is installed, create your first template, which tells Packer
what platforms to build images for and how you want to build them. In our
case, we'll create a simple AMI that has Redis pre-installed. Save this
file as quick-start.json
. Be sure to replace any credentials with your
own.
{
"builders": [{
"type": "amazon-ebs",
"access_key": "YOUR KEY HERE",
"secret_key": "YOUR SECRET KEY HERE",
"region": "us-east-1",
"source_ami": "ami-de0d9eb7",
"instance_type": "t1.micro",
"ssh_username": "ubuntu",
"ami_name": "packer-example {{timestamp}}"
}]
}
Next, tell Packer to build the image:
$ packer build quick-start.json
...
Packer will build an AMI according to the "quick-start" template. The AMI will be available in your AWS account. To delete the AMI, you must manually delete it using the AWS console. Packer builds your images, it does not manage their lifecycle. Where they go, how they're run, etc. is up to you.
Full, comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Packer website:
If you wish to work on Packer itself or any of its built-in providers, you'll first need Go installed (version 1.4+ is required). Make sure Go is properly installed, including setting up a GOPATH.
Next, install the following software packages, which are needed for some dependencies:
Then, install Gox, which is used as a compilation tool on top of Go:
$ go get -u github.com/mitchellh/gox
Next, clone this repository into $GOPATH/src/github.com/mitchellh/packer
.
Install the necessary dependencies by running make updatedeps
and then just
type make
. This will compile some more dependencies and then run the tests. If
this exits with exit status 0, then everything is working!
$ make updatedeps
...
$ make
...
To compile a development version of Packer and the built-in plugins,
run make dev
. This will put Packer binaries in the bin
folder:
$ make dev
...
$ bin/packer
...
If you're developing a specific package, you can run tests for just that
package by specifying the TEST
variable. For example below, only
packer
package tests will be run.
$ make test TEST=./packer
...
Packer has comprehensive acceptance tests covering the builders of Packer.
If you're working on a feature of a builder or a new builder and want verify it is functioning (and also hasn't broken anything else), we recommend running the acceptance tests.
Warning: The acceptance tests create/destroy/modify real resources, which may incur real costs in some cases. In the presence of a bug, it is technically possible that broken backends could leave dangling data behind. Therefore, please run the acceptance tests at your own risk. At the very least, we recommend running them in their own private account for whatever builder you're testing.
To run the acceptance tests, invoke make testacc
:
$ make testacc TEST=./builder/amazon/ebs
...
The TEST
variable is required, and you should specify the folder where the
backend is. The TESTARGS
variable is recommended to filter down to a specific
resource to test, since testing all of them at once can sometimes take a very
long time.
Acceptance tests typically require other environment variables to be set for things such as access keys. The test itself should error early and tell you what to set, so it is not documented here.