github.com/aspring/packer@v0.8.1-0.20150629211158-9db281ac0f89/website/source/docs/basics/terminology.html.markdown (about)

     1  ---
     2  layout: "docs"
     3  page_title: "Packer Terminology"
     4  description: |-
     5    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 easy referencing.
     6  ---
     7  
     8  # Packer Terminology
     9  
    10  There are a handful of terms used throughout the Packer documentation where
    11  the meaning may not be immediately obvious if you haven't used Packer before.
    12  Luckily, there are relatively few. This page documents all the terminology
    13  required to understand and use Packer. The terminology is in alphabetical
    14  order for easy referencing.
    15  
    16  - `Artifacts` are the results of a single build, and are usually a set of IDs
    17  or files to represent a machine image. Every builder produces a single
    18  artifact. As an example, in the case of the Amazon EC2 builder, the artifact is
    19  a set of AMI IDs (one per region). For the VMware builder, the artifact is a
    20  directory of files comprising the created virtual machine.
    21  
    22  - `Builds` are a single task that eventually produces an image for a single
    23  platform. Multiple builds run in parallel. Example usage in a
    24  sentence: "The Packer build produced an AMI to run our web application."
    25  Or: "Packer is running the builds now for VMware, AWS, and VirtualBox."
    26  
    27  - `Builders` are components of Packer that are able to create a machine
    28  image for a single platform. Builders read in some configuration and use
    29  that to run and generate a machine image. A builder is invoked as part of a
    30  build in order to create the actual resulting images. Example builders include
    31  VirtualBox, VMware, and Amazon EC2. Builders can be created and added to
    32  Packer in the form of plugins.
    33  
    34  - `Commands` are sub-commands for the `packer` program that perform some
    35  job. An example command is "build", which is invoked as `packer build`.
    36  Packer ships with a set of commands out of the box in order to define
    37  its command-line interface. Commands can also be created and added to
    38  Packer in the form of plugins.
    39  
    40  - `Post-processors` are components of Packer that take the result of
    41  a builder or another post-processor and process that to
    42  create a new artifact. Examples of post-processors are
    43  compress to compress artifacts, upload to upload artifacts, etc.
    44  
    45  - `Provisioners` are components of Packer that install and configure
    46  software within a running machine prior to that machine being turned
    47  into a static image. They perform the major work of making the image contain
    48  useful software. Example provisioners include shell scripts, Chef, Puppet,
    49  etc.
    50  
    51  - `Templates` are JSON files which define one or more builds
    52  by configuring the various components of Packer. Packer is able to read a
    53  template and use that information to create multiple machine images in
    54  parallel.