Packer Cheatsheet

Useful Links

• Documentation

Installing Packer

Chocolatey makes this a breeze:

choco install packer -y

Validate JSON Template

Validate Syntax and Configuration

packer validate TEMPLATENAME.json

Validate Syntax Only

packer validate -syntax-only TEMPLATENAME.json

Debugging

Enable Logging to a File

This example uses PowerShell to set environmental variables:

# Set timestamp and environment vars
$timestamp = Get-Date -Format 'yyyyMMdd-HHmmss'
$env:PACKER_LOG = 1
$env:PACKER_LOG_PATH = "packer-$($timestamp).log"

# Check environment vars
Get-ChildItem env: | Where-Object Name -match packer

Enable Logging to STDERR Stream

PACKER_LOG=1 packer build <config.json>