Vagrant Box generations with Packer
Since Packer is generally expected to run on your local machine, you have to install packer commands first.
Please refer the HashiCorp's official documents for its installation, but you can easily download binaries from HashiCorp rpeository.
# Clone this repository
% git clone [email protected]:hwakabh/boxes.git
# Navigate to directory of your prefered OS
% cd distroless-debian
# Install Packer plugins required for each build
% packer init .
% packer plugins installed
# Configure required variables
% export GHCR_TOKEN='***'
% export VAGRANT_HCP_CLIENT_ID='***'
% export VAGRANT_HCP_CLIENT_SECRET='***'
% export HCP_PROJECT_ID='***'
% export HCP_CLIENT_ID='***'
% export HCP_CLIENT_SECRET='***'
# Build Packer sources
% packer build .Regardless of what target OS you choose, all the form-factors of artifacts in this repository are Boxes or Container images.
The workflow of building container images (builder/docker) are:
source/dockerfor pulling existing container images and export with tar formatpost-processor/docker-importfor building container images from tar filepost-processor/docker-pushfor pushing images to registry, ghcr.io.
The workflow of build Vagrant boxes (builder/vagrant) for docker provider are:
source/dockerfor pulling existing container images and export with tar formatpost-processor/docker-importfor building container images from tar filepost-processor/vagrantfor converting from Docker container image to Vagrant box, in order to run containers as boxpost-processor/vagrant-registryfor pushing boxes to HCP Vagrant Registry- then Packer will store artifact metadata to HCP Packer Registry, with the configurations of
hcp_packer_registryblock in each build
Since Vagrant has supported building container images by using built-in Docker provider, it seems to be a bit confusing, but this will leverage to use container and virtual machines at the same time with a single Vargrantfile.
Please also refer the documents about Packer's general build process of virtual machine images as Vagrant boxes.
As Packer can build various types of artifacts, there is multiple image outputs from a single OS image, which you navigated before running packer build commands.
Currently we have tested the following OS flavors, and implemented with the workflows of GitHub Actions.
| OS Name | Container Images | Box(docker) | Box(vmware_desktop) | Box(virtualbox) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| alpine (arm64) | o | x | o | o |
| alpine (amd64) | x | x | o (local-only) | o (local-only) |
| distroless-debian (arm64) | o | x | x | x |
| distroless-debian (amd64) | x | x | x | x |
Regarding Boxes as artifacts, since Vagrant could be accepted to run on several platforms, there are multiple boxes for providers.
Generally we expect to use VMware Fusion with vmware_desktop Vagrant provider, whereas the vmware_desktop provider is also supporting VMware Workstation.
Please refer the provider documents about each Box.
For building arm64 docker images, we have used ubuntu-24.04-arm GitHub runner on implemented workflows.
Please visit GitHub's document if you would like to change runners for several CPU architectures or platforms.