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Templates: Builders
Within the template, the builders section contains an array of all the builders that Packer should use to generate a machine images for the template.
Builders are responsible for creating machines and generating images from them for various platforms. For example, there are separate builders for EC2, VMware, VirtualBox, etc. Packer comes with many builders by default, and can also be extended to add new builders.
This documentation page will cover how to configure a builder in a template. The specific configuration options available for each builder, however, must be referenced from the documentation for that specific builder.
Within a template, a section of builder definitions looks like this:
{
"builders": [
... one or more builder definitions here ...
]
}
Builder Definition
A single builder definition maps to exactly one build.
A builder definition is a JSON object that requires at least a type key. The
type is the name of the builder that will be used to create a machine image
for the build.
In addition to the type, other keys configure the builder itself. For
example, the AWS builder requires an access_key, secret_key, and
some other settings. These are placed directly within the builder definition.
An example builder definition is shown below, in this case configuring the AWS builder:
{
"type": "amazon-ebs",
"access_key": "...",
"secret_key": "..."
}
Named Builds
Each build in Packer has a name. By default, the name is just the name
of the builder being used. In general, this is good enough. Names only serve
as an indicator in the output of what is happening. If you want, however,
you can specify a custom name using the name key within the builder definition.
This is particularly useful if you have multiple builds defined that use the same underlying builder. In this case, you must specify a name for at least one of them since the names must be unique.