56 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
56 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
---
|
|
description: |
|
|
There are a handful of terms used throughout the Packer documentation where
|
|
the meaning may not be immediately obvious if you haven't used Packer before.
|
|
Luckily, there are relatively few. This page documents all the terminology
|
|
required to understand and use Packer. The terminology is in alphabetical
|
|
order for quick referencing.
|
|
layout: docs
|
|
page_title: Terminology
|
|
---
|
|
|
|
# Packer Terminology
|
|
|
|
There are a handful of terms used throughout the Packer documentation where the
|
|
meaning may not be immediately obvious if you haven't used Packer before.
|
|
Luckily, there are relatively few. This page documents all the terminology
|
|
required to understand and use Packer. The terminology is in alphabetical order
|
|
for quick referencing.
|
|
|
|
- `Artifacts` are the results of a single build, and are usually a set of IDs or
|
|
files to represent a machine image. Every builder produces a single artifact.
|
|
As an example, in the case of the Amazon EC2 builder, the artifact is a set of
|
|
AMI IDs (one per region). For the VMware builder, the artifact is a directory
|
|
of files comprising the created virtual machine.
|
|
|
|
- `Builds` are a single task that eventually produces an image for a single
|
|
platform. Multiple builds run in parallel. Example usage in a sentence: "The
|
|
Packer build produced an AMI to run our web application." Or: "Packer is
|
|
running the builds now for VMware, AWS, and VirtualBox."
|
|
|
|
- `Builders` are components of Packer that are able to create a machine image
|
|
for a single platform. Builders read in some configuration and use that to run
|
|
and generate a machine image. A builder is invoked as part of a build in order
|
|
to create the actual resulting images. Example builders include VirtualBox,
|
|
VMware, and Amazon EC2. Builders can be created and added to Packer in the
|
|
form of plugins.
|
|
|
|
- `Commands` are sub-commands for the `packer` program that perform some job. An
|
|
example command is "build", which is invoked as `packer build`. Packer ships
|
|
with a set of commands out of the box in order to define its command-line
|
|
interface.
|
|
|
|
- `Post-processors` are components of Packer that take the result of a builder
|
|
or another post-processor and process that to create a new artifact. Examples
|
|
of post-processors are compress to compress artifacts, upload to upload
|
|
artifacts, etc.
|
|
|
|
- `Provisioners` are components of Packer that install and configure software
|
|
within a running machine prior to that machine being turned into a static
|
|
image. They perform the major work of making the image contain useful
|
|
software. Example provisioners include shell scripts, Chef, Puppet, etc.
|
|
|
|
- `Templates` are JSON files which define one or more builds by configuring the
|
|
various components of Packer. Packer is able to read a template and use that
|
|
information to create multiple machine images in parallel.
|