Name: Packer
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Packer overview

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

Use Terraform to launch completely provisioned and configured machine instances with Packer images in seconds.

Identical images allow you to run dev, staging, and production environments across platforms.

By provisioning instances from stable images installed and configured by Packer, you can ensure buggy software does not get deployed.

Keep dev, staging, and production environments as similar as possible by generating images for multiple platforms at the same time.

Generate new machine images for multiple platforms, launch and test, and verify the infrastructure changes work; then, use Terraform to put your images in production.

Create software appliances and disposable product demos quickly, even with software that changes continuously.

What’s new in version 1.8.0

Updated on Mar 07 2022

Core: add a env argument to provisioner blocks that allow for setting a map of key/value pairs to inject prior to the execute_command. the env argument is an alternative to using environment_vars for setting environment variables, which has the added ability to read from packer datasources.
Core: bump version of go-getter to allow for downloading isos with pgp signed checksums.
Core: docker images are now available for all supported architectures that the linux binaries are built for including arm, arm64, 386, and amd64
Core: packer's linux package service configs and pre/post install scripts are now available under .release/linux.
Core: packer's linux packages are now available for all supported linux architectures including arm, arm64, 386, and amd64
Core: the dockerfile that is used to build the packer docker image available at hashicorp/packer now lives in the root of this repo. the readme that describes how to build the docker targets defined in the dockerfile are available under ./release/docker/readme.md.
Core: the packer-plugin-check command has been removed. plugin maintainers should update their release configuration to use the packer-sdc plugin- check command.

Core/hcl2: fixes an issue preventing builds from pausing between provisioners when the --debug argument has been passed.
Core/hcl2: fixes a data loss issue when merging an empty-object map to a non- empty map variable.
Core/hcl2: fixes a regression where references to locals via the lookup function were failing to find defined keys.
Core/hcl2: fixes an issue where hcp packer build labels from the first completed build image were being copied to all images within the same build.
Core: hcp packer datasources will no longer fail for iterations with scheduled revocations.
Core: packer darwin builds now use macos system dns resolver for resolving hostnames.