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The Packer Vagrant post-processor takes a build and converts the artifact into a valid Vagrant box, if it can. This lets you use Packer to automatically create arbitrarily complex Vagrant boxes, and is in fact how the official boxes distributed by Vagrant are created.
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Vagrant - Post-Processors
docs-post-processors-vagrant-box

Vagrant Post-Processor

Type: vagrant

The Packer Vagrant post-processor takes a build and converts the artifact into a valid Vagrant box, if it can. This lets you use Packer to automatically create arbitrarily complex Vagrant boxes, and is in fact how the official boxes distributed by Vagrant are created.

If you've never used a post-processor before, please read the documentation on using post-processors in templates. This knowledge will be expected for the remainder of this document.

Because Vagrant boxes are provider-specific, the Vagrant post-processor is hardcoded to understand how to convert the artifacts of certain builders into proper boxes for their respective providers.

Currently, the Vagrant post-processor can create boxes for the following providers.

  • AWS
  • Azure
  • DigitalOcean
  • Azure
  • Hyper-V
  • LXC
  • Parallels
  • QEMU
  • VirtualBox
  • VMware
  • Docker

-> Support for additional providers is planned. If the Vagrant post-processor doesn't support creating boxes for a provider you care about, please help by contributing to Packer and adding support for it.

Configuration

The simplest way to use the post-processor is to just enable it. No configuration is required by default. This will mostly do what you expect and will build functioning boxes for many of the built-in builders of Packer.

However, if you want to configure things a bit more, the post-processor does expose some configuration options. The available options are listed below, with more details about certain options in following sections.

  • compression_level (number) - An integer representing the compression level to use when creating the Vagrant box. Valid values range from 0 to 9, with 0 being no compression and 9 being the best compression. By default, compression is enabled at level 6.

  • include (array of strings) - Paths to files to include in the Vagrant box. These files will each be copied into the top level directory of the Vagrant box (regardless of their paths). They can then be used from the Vagrantfile.

  • keep_input_artifact (boolean) - If set to true, do not delete the output_directory on a successful build. Defaults to false.

  • output (string) - The full path to the box file that will be created by this post-processor. This is a configuration template. The variable Provider is replaced by the Vagrant provider the box is for. The variable ArtifactId is replaced by the ID of the input artifact. The variable BuildName is replaced with the name of the build. By default, the value of this config is packer_{{.BuildName}}_{{.Provider}}.box.

  • vagrantfile_template (string) - Path to a template to use for the Vagrantfile that is packaged with the box.

Provider-Specific Overrides

If you have a Packer template with multiple builder types within it, you may want to configure the box creation for each type a little differently. For example, the contents of the Vagrantfile for a Vagrant box for AWS might be different from the contents of the Vagrantfile you want for VMware. The post-processor lets you do this.

Specify overrides within the override configuration by provider name:

{
  "type": "vagrant",
  "compression_level": 1,
  "override": {
    "vmware": {
      "compression_level": 0
    }
  }
}

In the example above, the compression level will be set to 1 except for VMware, where it will be set to 0.

The available provider names are:

  • aws
  • azure
  • digitalocean
  • google
  • hyperv
  • parallels
  • libvirt
  • lxc
  • scaleway
  • virtualbox
  • vmware
  • docker

Input Artifacts

By default, Packer will delete the original input artifact, assuming you only want the final Vagrant box as the result. If you wish to keep the input artifact (the raw virtual machine, for example), then you must configure Packer to keep it.

Please see the documentation on input artifacts for more information.

Docker

Using a Docker input artifact will include a reference to the image in the Vagrantfile. If the image tag is not specified in the post-processor, the sha256 hash will be used.

The following Docker input artifacts are supported:

  • docker builder with commit: true, always uses the sha256 hash
  • docker-import
  • docker-tag
  • docker-push