github.com/ratanraj/packer@v1.3.2/website/source/docs/basics/terminology.html.md (about)

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