109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
109 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
---
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layout: docs
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sidebar_current: docs-commands
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page_title: Commands
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description: |-
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Packer is controlled using a command-line interface. All interaction with
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Packer is done via the `packer` tool. Like many other command-line tools, the
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`packer` tool takes a subcommand to execute, and that subcommand may have
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additional options as well. Subcommands are executed with `packer SUBCOMMAND`,
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where "SUBCOMMAND" is the actual command you wish to execute.
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---
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# Packer Commands (CLI)
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Packer is controlled using a command-line interface. All interaction with Packer
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is done via the `packer` tool. Like many other command-line tools, the `packer`
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tool takes a subcommand to execute, and that subcommand may have additional
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options as well. Subcommands are executed with `packer SUBCOMMAND`, where
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"SUBCOMMAND" is the actual command you wish to execute.
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If you run `packer` by itself, help will be displayed showing all available
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subcommands and a brief synopsis of what they do. In addition to this, you can
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run any `packer` command with the `-h` flag to output more detailed help for a
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specific subcommand.
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In addition to the documentation available on the command-line, each command is
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documented on this website. You can find the documentation for a specific
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subcommand using the navigation to the left.
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## Machine-Readable Output
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By default, the output of Packer is very human-readable. It uses nice
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formatting, spacing, and colors in order to make Packer a pleasure to use.
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However, Packer was built with automation in mind. To that end, Packer supports
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a fully machine-readable output setting, allowing you to use Packer in automated
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environments.
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Because the machine-readable output format was made with Unix tools in mind, it
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is `awk`/`sed`/`grep`/etc. friendly and provides a familiar interface without
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requiring you to learn a new format.
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### Enabling Machine-Readable Output
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The machine-readable output format can be enabled by passing the
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`-machine-readable` flag to any Packer command. This immediately enables all
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output to become machine-readable on stdout. Logging, if enabled, continues to
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appear on stderr. An example of the output is shown below:
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```text
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$ packer -machine-readable version
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1376289459,,version,0.2.4
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1376289459,,version-prerelease,
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1376289459,,version-commit,eed6ece
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1376289459,,ui,say,Packer v0.2.4.dev (eed6ece+CHANGES)
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```
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The format will be covered in more detail later. But as you can see, the output
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immediately becomes machine-friendly. Try some other commands with the
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`-machine-readable` flag to see!
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~> The `-machine-readable` flag is designed for automated environments and is
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mutually-exclusive with the `-debug` flag, which is designed for interactive
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environments.
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### Format for Machine-Readable Output
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The machine readable format is a line-oriented, comma-delimited text format.
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This makes it more convenient to parse using standard Unix tools such as `awk` or
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`grep` in addition to full programming languages like Ruby or Python.
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The format is:
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```text
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timestamp,target,type,data...
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```
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Each component is explained below:
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- `timestamp` is a Unix timestamp in UTC of when the message was printed.
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- `target` is the target of the following output. This is empty if the message
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is related to Packer globally. Otherwise, this is generally a build name so
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you can relate output to a specific build while parallel builds are running.
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- `type` is the type of machine-readable message being outputted. There are a
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set of standard types which are covered later, but each component of Packer
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(builders, provisioners, etc.) may output their own custom types as well,
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allowing the machine-readable output to be infinitely flexible.
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- `data` is zero or more comma-separated values associated with the prior type.
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The exact amount and meaning of this data is type-dependent, so you must read
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the documentation associated with the type to understand fully.
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Within the format, if data contains a comma, it is replaced with
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`%!(PACKER_COMMA)`. This was preferred over an escape character such as `\'`
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because it is more friendly to tools like `awk`.
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Newlines within the format are replaced with their respective standard escape
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sequence. Newlines become a literal `\n` within the output. Carriage returns
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become a literal `\r`.
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### Machine-Readable Message Types
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The set of machine-readable message types can be found in the
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[machine-readable format](/docs/commands/index.html) complete
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documentation section. This section contains documentation on all the message
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types exposed by Packer core as well as all the components that ship with
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Packer by default.
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