--- layout: "inner" page_title: "Community" description: |- Packer is an open source project with a growing community. ---
Packer is an open source project with a growing community. There are active, dedicated users willing to help you through various mediums.
IRC: #packer-tool
on Freenode
Announcement list: HashiCorp Announcement Google Group
Discussion list: Packer Google Group
Bug Tracker: Issue tracker on GitHub. Please only use this for reporting bugs. Do not ask for general help here. Use IRC or the mailing list for that.
Training: Paid HashiCorp training courses are also available in a city near you. Private training courses are also available.
The following people are some of the faces behind Packer. They each contribute to Packer in some core way. Over time, faces may appear and disappear from this list as contributors come and go. In addition to the faces below, Packer is a project by HashiCorp, so many HashiCorp employees actively contribute to Packer.
Mitchell Hashimoto is the creator of Packer. He developed the core of Packer as well as the Amazon, VirtualBox, and VMware builders. In addition to Packer, Mitchell is the creator of Vagrant. He is self described as "automation obsessed."
Jack Pearkes created and maintains the DigitalOcean builder for Packer. Outside of Packer, Jack is an avid open source contributor and software consultant.
In addition to Packer, Mark Peek helps maintain various open source projects such as cloudtools and IronPort Python libraries. Mark is also a FreeBSD committer.
Ross Smith maintains our VMware builder on Windows, and provides other valuable assistance. Ross is an open source enthusiast, published author, and freelance consultant.
Rickard von Essen maintains our Parallels Desktop builder. Rickard is an polyglot programmer and consults on Continuous Delivery.
Matt maintains Packer for HashiCorp. After picking up Chef for a job, he decided that continually provisioning the same machine was bound for trouble. Luckily Packer had just been created, and was the answer to his prayers. Now he works on it professionally, and couldn't be happier.
Megan maintains Packer for HashiCorp; in her past life she used Packer and Vagrant in her work as a cloud infrastructure developer.