Packer::Yaml

This gem is a command line tool to allow you to manage your packer config with YAML instead of JSON. Indeed JSON format is not useful for theses kind of config type :

• you cannot have include so if you have some variation of your config you have to duplicate JSON config.
• packer doesn't ignore JSON comments, so you cannot comment your code
• JSON is a very strict format which is boring with this such as comma at end of line

How to use it

First, you can take the same syntax than in packer but in YAML format.

Example :

Main file :

variables:
  aws_access_key: "AWS_ACCESS_KEY"
  aws_secret_key: "AWS_SECRET_KEY"
  consul_url: "https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul/0.6.3/consul_0.6.3_linux_amd64.zip"
  :include: my_yaml_vars
builders:
  - type: "amazon-ebs"
    access_key: "{{user `aws_access_key`}}"
    secret_key: "{{user `aws_secret_key`}}"
  - type: "googlecompute"
    account_file: gce.json
    project_id: mikrob
  - :include: my_yaml_builder
provisioners:
  - type: shell
    inline:
      - "#!/bin/bash"
      - sudo useradd -m deploy
      - sudo mkdir -p /home/deploy/.ssh/
      - sudo chown -R deploy /home/deploy
      - sudo chown -R deploy /home/deploy/.ssh
      - sudo mkdir -p /root/.ssh/
      - sudo apt-get -y install ssh
  - :include: my_yaml_provisionner
  - :include: my_yaml_provisionner2

my_yaml_vars.yml :

customer_var: customer_var_value
google_url: google.fr
gmail_url: google.fr/gmail

my_yaml_builder.yml :

type: "docker"
image: "ubuntu:14.04"
commit: true

my_yaml_provisionner.yml :

- type: shell
  inline:
    - "#!/bin/bash"
    - "echo '{{user `consul_url` }}' > /opt/consul_url"
    - touch /opt/consul_url
    - curl http://google.fr

my_yaml_provisionner2.yml :

- type: shell
  inline:
    - "hostname > /opt/hostname"
- type: shell
  inline:
    - "echo 'foo' > /opt/foo"

You can run packer_yaml make_json ./examples/packer2.yml

The following json will be generated.

{
  "variables": {
    "aws_access_key": "AWS_ACCESS_KEY",
    "aws_secret_key": "AWS_SECRET_KEY",
    "consul_url": "https://releases.hashicorp.com/consul/0.6.3/consul_0.6.3_linux_amd64.zip",
    "customer_var": "customer_var_value",
    "google_url": "google.fr",
    "gmail_url": "google.fr/gmail"
  },
  "builders": [
    {
      "type": "amazon-ebs",
      "access_key": "{{user `aws_access_key`}}",
      "secret_key": "{{user `aws_secret_key`}}"
    },
    {
      "type": "googlecompute",
      "account_file": "gce.json",
      "project_id": "mikrob"
    },
    {
      "type": "docker",
      "image": "ubuntu:14.04",
      "commit": true
    }
  ],
  "provisioners": [
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "#!/bin/bash",
        "sudo useradd -m deploy",
        "sudo mkdir -p /home/deploy/.ssh/",
        "sudo chown -R deploy /home/deploy",
        "sudo chown -R deploy /home/deploy/.ssh",
        "sudo mkdir -p /root/.ssh/",
        "sudo apt-get -y install ssh"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "#!/bin/bash",
        "echo '{{user `consul_url` }}' > /opt/consul_url",
        "touch /opt/consul_url",
        "curl http://google.fr"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "hostname > /opt/hostname"
      ]
    },
    {
      "type": "shell",
      "inline": [
        "echo 'foo' > /opt/foo"
      ]
    }
  ]
}