Packer is a tool for building identical machine images for multiple platforms from a single source configuration.

Packer is lightweight, runs on every major operating system, and is highly performant, creating machine images for multiple platforms in parallel. Packer supports various platforms through external plugin integrations, the full list of which can be found at https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/integrations.

The images that Packer creates can easily be turned into Vagrant boxes.

There is a great introduction and getting started guide for building a Docker image on your local machine without using any paid cloud resources.

Alternatively, you can refer to getting started with AWS to learn how to build a machine image for an external cloud provider.

HCP Packer registry stores Packer image metadata, enabling you to track your image lifecycle.

To get started with building an AWS machine image to HCP Packer for referencing in Terraform refer to the collection of HCP Packer Tutorials.

Comprehensive documentation is viewable on the Packer website at https://developer.hashicorp.com/packer/docs.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for best practices and instructions on setting up your development environment to work on Packer.

Important: Packer documentation has moved to the hashicorp/web-unified-docs repository.

To contribute documentation changes:

• Make contributions directly to the web-unified-docs repository
• See the Updating Documentation section in CONTRIBUTING.md for detailed instructions

As contributors' circumstances change, development on a community maintained plugin can slow. When this happens, HashiCorp may use GitHub's option to archive the plugin’s repository, to clearly signal the plugin's status to users.

What does unmaintained mean?

1. The code repository and all commit history will still be available.
2. Documentation will remain on the Packer website.
3. Issues and pull requests are monitored as a best effort.
4. No active development will be performed by HashiCorp.

If you are interested in maintaining an unmaintained or archived plugin, please reach out to us at packer@hashicorp.com.