Packer

Config File (Deprecated)

config-file-deprecated

Config Directory

Config directory is defined in $PACKER_CONFIG_DIR, defaults to ${HOME}/.config/packer/.

Plugin Directory

Plugins are loaded from:

1. Directories under the $PACKER_PLUGIN_PATH, if set, no other directories’ are checked.
2. The directory where packer is installed, or the executable directory.
3. The current working directory, where packer build is being invoked. (“.”)
4. The $PACKER_CONFIG_DIR/plugins directory. $PACKER_CONFIG_DIR refers to Packer’s config directory, if it could be found.

Environment Variables

Packer uses a variety of environmental variables. A listing and description of each can be found below:

Environment Var	Defaults	Description
PACKER_CACHE_DIR	~/.cache/packer	The location of the Packer cache. Relative paths can be used. Some plugins can cache large files like ISOs in the cache dir.
PACKER_CONFIG	~/.packerconfig	Obsolete. The location of the core configuration file. The format of the configuration file is basic JSON. See Config file.
PACKER_CONFIG_DIR	~/.config/packer/	The location for the home directory of Packer. See Packer’s home directory.
PACKER_GITHUB_API_TOKEN		When using Packer init on HCL2 templates, Packer queries the public API from Github which limits the amount of queries on can set the PACKER_GITHUB_API_TOKEN with a Github Token to make it higher.
PACKER_LOG	0	Setting this to any value other than “” (empty string) or “0” will enable the logger. See the debugging page.
PACKER_LOG_PATH		The location of the log file. Must be set for any logging to occur.
PACKER_NO_COLOR		Setting this to any value will disable color in the terminal.
PACKER_PLUGIN_MAX_PORT	25000	The max port that Packer uses for communication with plugins, since plugin communication happens over TCP connections on your local host.
PACKER_PLUGIN_MIN_PORT	10000	The minimum port that Packer uses for communication with plugins, since plugin communication happens over TCP connections on your local host.
PACKER_PLUGIN_PATH		e.g. ~/custom-dir-1:~/custom-dir-2. Separate directories in the PATH string using a colon (:) on POSIX systems and a semicolon (;) on Windows systems.
CHECKPOINT_DISABLE		When Packer is invoked it sometimes calls out to checkpoint.hashicorp.com to look for new versions of Packer. If you want to disable this for security or privacy reasons, you can set this environment variable to 1.
TMPDIR	/tmp	The location of for the temporary files. May be necessary to customize when working with large files since /tmp is a memory-backed in some distributions, in which case /var/tmp might be preferred.

Commands

CLI Commands

See Also

Packer Makefile