A simple utility to create an AMI using a recipe. This is an alternative to Packer.io. Chic uses CloudFormation to create and destroy resources, so it's always easy to manage the AWS resources that Chic creates.

chic <dir> or chic <Chicfile>

The Chicfile is intentionally quite similar to a Dockerfile. It is, however, a shell script, so you can use shell scripting in the Chicfile. Note that the Chicfile is executed on your local machine, unless you're using a RUN command to execute on the remote machine building the image.

• FROM <ami> The AMI to use as the base for the image.
• FROM <distro> <queries> Search for latest AMI from a supported distro, see below.
• FROM self <queries> Search your own AMIs.
• INSTANCE_TYPE <instance type> The instance type to use to build the image.

• VOLUME [name=<device name>] [size=<size in GB>] Configure the root volume. Any values not specified are derived from the source AMI.
• NAME <name> The name to give to the resulting image
• TAG <name> <value> A tag to create on the resulting image. This command can be used multiple times.
• SSH_USERNAME <username> The username to connect to the image builder for ssh
• ENV <key> [<value>] Set an environment variable default in the Chicfile. If a value is not specified then one MUST be provided in the environment or config file when chic is run. This command can be used multiple times.
• COPY [-o <user:group>] <source> ... <dest> Copy a file from the local machine to the remote machine. This command can have multiple source arguments, and can be used multiple times. Files and directories are copied owned by root and group root, or you can use the -o switch to specify the user and group.
• RUN <command> Run the given command on the remote machine. This command can be used multiple times, and can also accept its commands on stdin so can be used with heredocs.
• MANUAL run an interactive ssh session with the builder image, so you can poke around.

Environment variables are made available to scripts executing on the remote server as part of a RUN command.

You must specify environment variables in the Chicfile using the ENV command. This also specifies the default value for the environment variable.

The supported distros are:

• ubuntu
• ubuntu-pro-server

After the distro name you may include filters to narrow down the image, including:

• release e.g. release=xenial
• architecture defaults to architecture=x86_64
• root_device_type defaults to root_device_type=ebs
• image_type defaults to image_type=machine
• hypervisor defaults to hypervisor=xen
• virtualization_type defaults to virtualization_type=hvm
• volume_type e.g. volume_type=gp2
• owner defaults to official owner for the distro
• tag:<name> e.g. tag:name=one_word

Here is an example of a Chicfile to create a basic image:

FROM ami-e2021d81
NAME my-chic-ami
TAG stage production
SSH_USERNAME ubuntu
ENV MY_STAGE production
COPY my-bootstrap.sh /opt/
RUN hostname my-ami-host
RUN <<"RUN_EOF"
echo "$MY_STAGE" > /opt/my-stage
RUN_EOF

Note that the default value of the environment variable MY_STAGE is set to production, but you could override this by setting the MY_STAGE environment variable before running chic, e.g. MY_STAGE=staging chic .

And an example of a Chicfile that searches for the AMI:

FROM ubuntu release=xenial

The following command-line options control chic:

• -p <profile> The awscli configuration profile to use to access AWS
• -r <region> The AWS region to use to build the image (defaults to the default region for your awscli profile)
• -b Non-interactive mode

The following command-line options are supported to override Chicfile settings:

• -a <base ami> The AMI to use as the base for the image.
• -i <instance type> The instance type to use to build the image, defaults to t2.micro
• -n <name> The name to give to the resulting image
• -t <tag key>=<value> A tag to create on the resulting image. This option can be used multiple times, and is in addition to Chicfile tags.

You can also use the following environment variables to configure Chic:

• CHIC_PROFILE The awscli configuration profile to use to access AWS
• CHIC_REGION The AWS region to use to build the image

Chic looks for a .chic.cfg file in your current working directory, and parent directories, until it finds one. It then executes it to load environment variables from it.

CHIC_PROFILE=my-aws-profile

chic -p my-aws-profile -a ami-e2021d81 -n "My image" share/example.sh