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