I am rarely happier than when spending an entire day programming my computer to perform automatically a task that it would otherwise take me a good ten seconds to do by hand
-Douglas Adams, Last chance to See
Feedlots supply products to packers to process and package. Feedlot creates Packer templates for Packer to process and generate artifacts. Ok, a bit of a stretch, but it's the best I could come up with and better than the other names I had thought of.
Feedlot was created to make it easier to generate reproducable Packer templates and create updated Packer templates when new distro isos come out.
When creating Packer templates, Feedlot will ensure that all of the resources required by that template are part of the generated Packer template. The Feedlot templates can contain information about the resources that they require and the actual resources will be located and made part of the Packer template. If the referenced resource cannot be located, an error will occur and the requested Packer template will not be generated.
Feedlot builds Packer templates from either Feedlot build templates or, for quick flag based builds, from the supported distro defaults and Feedlot build defaults.
I originally started Feedlot for a few reasons. When Packer initially came out, I had trouble finding good Packer templates that I could learn from. Some parts of the template creation process involved more work than I liked and I seemed to run into template errors frequently because of mistakes I made. I'm lazy, I didn't like looking up the iso and checksum information for my Packer templates. I also wasn't happy about manually replicating setting values between the VMWare and Virtualbox builders. Overall, I found the process, though easy enough, more cumbersome than I would like. I naively thought generating Packer templates from pre-defined configurations would be easier. During the creation of Packer, I realized I'd have to support more than just builders, so Feedlot evolved into generating a more complete template.
The goal was to make it easier to create various configurations by minimally defining the differences between the named build and the distro's defaults; making it easier to generate updated templates as the releases that the templates depended on were updated.
I'm not sure if I achieved my goals, or if I just added complexity to different parts that didn't need to be there.
Feedlot configurations can be defined in either JSON or TOML. The build configuration files that come with Feedlot are defined in my basterdization of JSON: commented JSON, or cjsn. CJSN is JSON with comments. Once the comments are stripped out, the JSON is consistent with RFC 4627. If real JSON is preferred, use that instead.
Because Feedlot uses Go, it can be compiled for cross-platform use. It has been tested on Linux and Windows.
Currently, no pre-compiled versions of Feedlot are made available. To use Feedlot, on must go install it. This assumes you have Go installed. If not either follow the install instructions or use the install_go, for Linux, or install_go.ps1, for Windows at https://github.com/mohae/install-go. This assumes you have$GOPATH/bin in your path.
$ go install github.com/mohae/feedlot
$ feedlot
The output will be feedlot's usage.
If you move Feedlot, make sure that your out_dir and src_dir settings are findable by the Feedlot executable. If you are using a custom application configuration file, make sure it's either in the application directory or the FEEDLOT_CFG_FILE environment variable is set with its location.
Feedlot works without a Feedlot configuration file: feedlot.json or feedlot.toml. If you want to override any of the Feedlot defaults, this can be done with either a Feedlot configuration file, or setting the relevant Environment variable.
Once built, Packer templates can be generated using the feedlot build command. This command accepts 0 or more build names and generates a Packer template for each named Feedlot build template. If no build name is passed, the -distro flag must be passed, at minimum. The -distro flag specifies which distro to use for Feedlot's default build and generates a Packer template for that distro using that distro's defaults along with the Feedlot defaults found in defaults.toml. The specified distro must be in the supported configuration file: supported.toml, surpported.json, or supported.cjsn.
Once the Packer template(s) are generated by Feedlot, you will need to use Packer.
Build a Packer template for CentOS using the distro defaults:
feedlot build -distro=centos
Build a Packer template for Ubuntu using the distro defaults with an image override:
feedlot build -distro=ubuntu -image=server
Build a Packer template from a named build:
feedlot build 1504-64
Build multiple Packer templates: an Ubuntu i386 build using Ubuntu's defaults, and multiple named builds:
feedlot build -distro=ubuntu -arch=i386 1504-64 jessie-64 centos7-64
The configuration directories and files are listed as they exist in the repo and represent the application default locations. These files can be placed anywhere as long as the Feedlot configuration has been updated, whether via the application configuration file or by environment variables.
Feedlot will work without its configuration file present. The Feedlot configuration file is only needed if you want to override Feedlot's defaults without using flags or environment variables. Feedlot configuration files with its setting set to be consistent with Feedlot's defaults can be found in the examples directory. Either copy the appropriate file to Feedlot's working directory and modify as needed or set the appropriate environment variable(s). Feedlot will first check to see if the environment variable is set. If it is empty, the relevant Feedlot configuration file setting will be used.
The FEEDLOT_CONFIG environment variable can be used to specify a different file and location for Feedlot's configuration, otherwise the feedlot.json file will be used by default.
Configuration file settings
Check the feedlot.json.example file for the config setting names and their application default values.
Feedlot supports using environment variables for configuration settings. The environment variable name will always be upper-case and prefixed with FEEDLOT_. The rest of the environment variable name will be the name of the configuration setting for which it applies.
When an environment variable is set, it will override both the application default and configuration file values. Only command-line flags can override environment variables.
FEEDLOT_CFG_FILE // location of the Feedlot cfg file, e.g. feedlot.json
FEEDLOT_SUPPORTED_FILE // location of the file containing information on the supported distros
FEEDLOT_DEFAULT_FILE // location of the file containing Feedlot's default build settings
FEEDLOT_BUILD_FILE // location of the file defining Feedlot build templates
FEEDLOT_BUILD_LIST_FILE // location of the file defining sets of Feedlot build templates
The supported configuration file contains information about supported distros, or operating systems, their settings, including any distro specific overrides. Because Feedlot does distro specific processing, like ISO information look-up, Packer templates can be generated for supported distributions only and only for releases that that distribution currently supports.
Each supported distro has a defaults section, which defines the default arch, image, and release for the distro. These defaults define the target ISO to use unless the defaults are overridden by either flags or configuration.
Supported Distros:
* CentOS
* Debian
* Ubuntu
This file gets updated when new there are new releases, or at least shuld be updated when there are new releases.
The conf/ subdirectory holds the default configuration for Feedlot builds, default.cjsn and basic build configurations, build.cjsn. While conf/ is the default directory for Feedlot build configuration information, a different location can be set via the conf_dir setting.
The default.toml holds all the default settings for Feedlot build templates. A few settings that only apply at the distro level, like base_url, are not set here. Unless a Feedlot build template explicitly defines a setting, the values within the default.toml will be applied to all templates. Ideally, Feedlot build templates should only specify overrides to default settings and new settings, esp. Packer sections.
The defaults are also used when Feedlot templates are generated with a build template being specified:
The build.toml contains named Feedlot build templates. A build template is a named specification for a Packer template and contains the settings and Packer sections that will apply to it. When a Packer template is succesfully generated, the resulting json file, along with all resources, other than isos and some possible sensitive files, will be copied to the output directory. If a directory already exists in the target location and Feedlot is set to archive prior builds, a compressed tarball will be created out of it, otherwise, the existing directory will be removed. In either case, a new directory will be created and the artifacts of the Packer template will be placed within.
Feedlot build templates, along with the underlying default and supported distro defaults, define what the resulting Packer template will consist of. Each build template builder, provisioner, and post-processor section correspond to the Packer components in the same category. In addition to these, Feedlot templates also have some template settings and will have component type sections.
Feedlot will load any files in the conf directory that have the proper extension and aren't build_list or default as build configuration files. Thebuild names have to be unique.
Feedlot build template settings provide information that Feedlot uses to help it create the build template's Packer template. These settings usually only exist when there is a need to override the default setting. Setting Feedlot build template settings at the per build level also makes certain things more explicit.
description: corresponds to the Packer template description setting.
name: corresponds to the Packer template name setting, by default, the build template name is used.
out_dir: the directory to which the Packer template is written to and its resources copied to.
src_dir: the directory which contains the source and resource files the build template references.
include_component_string: a boolean as a string. Any value that Go's strconv.ParseBool() supports is allowed. Any unsupported character results in this setting being evaluated to false. Please check the notes section for more info.
min_packer_version: corresponds to the Packer template min_packer_version setting.
Each Packer section also has a _ids, e.g. builders has a builder_ids. This is a list of IDs, or map keys, that apply to the template being built. Each ID must have a corresponding section defined. Only sections with a matching entry in the _ids section will be processed by Feedlot. These sections exist because the merged template may have more types defined than you want processed for a particular Packer template; by specifying the Packer section types that the build template will use the other definitions will be ignored.
The IDs may correspond with a Packer component type, e.g. 'virtualbox-iso', or may be a unique ID. If the ID corresponds with a Packer component type, the definition does not need to include the Type setting. If the ID does not correspond with a Packer component type, the Type setting must exist in the IDs definition. The Type must correspond with the actual Packer component type it defines. This is useful in situations where one might have multiple components of the same type, e.g. a shell provisioner that runs to set some stuff up and a shell provisioner that runs to clean up after provisioning. This enables creation of complex workflows in Packer templates.
The resulting Packer template sections for each component will be in the same order defined in the _ids.
The provisioner_ids and post_processor_ids sections are optional as their respective sections are optional in Packer.
Feedlot supports a limited number of variables in the configuration files. These are mostly used to allow for the path of files and names of things to be built based on other information within the configuration, e.g :distro is replaced by the name of the distro for which the Packer template is being built.
Since Packer uses Go's template engine, Feedlot variables are prefixed with a colon, :, to avoid collision with Go template conventions, {{}}. Using a : in non-variable values may lead to unexpected results, as such don't use it unless you are prefixing a variable. A different delimiter can be specified: in the Feedlot configuration file by modifying the param_delim_start setting, by passing the param_delim_start flag, or by setting the environment variable, Feedlot_PARAM_DELIM_START. Your build templates can contain Packer variables because Feedlot uses a different delimiter for variables.
Current Feedlot variable replacement is dumb, it will look for the variables that it can replace and do so. A setting string may have contain multiple variables, in which case it replaces them as encountered, with the exception of src_dir and out_dir, which are resolved before any other directory path variables. This is because most path settings will start with either src_dir or out_dir.
System variables, these are automatically resolved by Packer and can be used in other variables.
:distro // The name of the distribution
:release // The full release number being used for the template
:arch // The architecture of the OS being used for the template
:image // The name of the image being used for the template.
:date // The current datetime.
:build_name // The name of the build.
Standard variables:
:name // The name for Packer
:out_dir // The directory that the template output should be written to.
:src_dir // The source directory for files that should be copied with the template.
For resource locations, Feedlot will attempt to locate the specified file by searching various possible locations. This is covered in the Find Algorithm for Build Template Sources and Resources section. For resources that will be part of the Packer template, their name should reflect what the Packer template will be using and not the path where Feedlot can find it.
Packer component definitions are map[string]Component, where the map key is the ID of the component section. A Feedlot component contains a type setting, which only needs to be set if the ID isn't a supported Packer component key, a settings section, which is a slice of strings and described below, and an arrays section, which is a map[string]interface{}.
The Feedlot build template Packer component setting section contains settings that are key/value pairs. Configuration settings take the form of key=value and Feedlot parses that to a key and value, with the value taking the appropriate data type. This is space insensitive and it is assumed that the first = encountered split the key from the value. This means that any spaces or equals, =, within a value are preserved, with the exception of leading and trailing spaces. Both the key and the value have their leading and trailing spaces trimmed.
For boolean values, strconv.ParseBool() is used with any error in parsing resulting in a value of false. Any value that strconv.ParseBool() evaluates to true are allowed to be used as values for true.
For int values, strconv.Atoi() is used to convert the value to an int. If the specified value results in an error from strconv.Atoi(), the error will be logged and processing will of that builder will stop.
The Feedlot build template Packer component arrays section contains any settings that are more complex than what can be represented as a simple key/value string. These are arrays, maps, and objects and are represented as map[string]interface{}. The key of the entry is the setting name and how the values are represented depends on the settings definition.
Command settings, like boot_command and shutdown_command, support the use of command files by specifying the command file in the setting value, instead of the actual command string. Any command setting value that ends in .command will be assumed to reference a Feedlot command file. The setting will be populated from the referenced file. If the setting only supports a single line, the first line of the command file will be used. For settings that support arrays of commands, like boot_command, the entire contents of the file will be used as the commands.
Feedlot's algorithm for finding build template sources applies to command files.
Packer templates can contain resources that it references, e.g. http_dir and scripts for the shell provisioner. The location specified in the templates are not where Feedlot would find the resource files to copy into the resulting Packer template.
Feedlot templates may contain references to sources from which it obtains Packer template data. These sources are mainly command files that contain shell commands to be inserted into the generated Packer template.
In order to be used, both referenced resources and sources must be findable by Feedlot. This algorithm should make it possible for files to be referenced in multiple Packer templates along with an easy way of restricting the scope, or availablility of files to certain templates or other category.
The src_dir: setting is used to specify the root location for Feedlot resources; all searches for a resource location will be restricted to this path. The base src_dir is defined in default.toml; it can be overridden by a Feedlot build template. The resource path, relative to the src_dir is the last location that Feedlot will check for the specified resource before returning a not found error.
Except for searches that include the build_name, Feedlot tends to search from deeper in the directory try to higher up, making it easier to scope resource availability, when useful. Build name based searches start with the root and work their way down because build_names must be unique, and as such, are already specific.
The first match encountered is returned. To provide help in understanding how Feedlot locates resources, the paths searched can be logged out by setting the log_level_file or log_level_stdout to TRACE.
The base search order is:
:src_dir/build_name
:src_dir/distro/build_name
:src_dir/distro/release/build_name
:src_dir/distro/releaseBase/build_name
:src_dir/distro/release/arch
:src_dir/distro/releaseBase/arch
:src_dir/distro/release/
:src_dir/distro/releaseBase/
:src_dir/distro/arch
:src_dir/distro/
:src_dir/
:src_dir is the value for the src_dir setting in the Feedlot build template.
arch is the iso architecture for the Packer template.
build_name is the name of the Feedlot build template that is being used to generate the Packer template.
distro is the name of the distro for which this template is being built, e.g. ubuntu, centos.
release is the full release number for the build, e.g. 6,6.
releaseBase is the whole version number for the build, e.g. the releaseBase of 6.6 is 6.
When applicable, resource searches are first performed by prepending the requested resource path with the name of the Packer component for which this resource applies prior to searching for the file, e.g. a search for vagrant.sh for the Shell provisioner would use shell/vagrant.sh'. If a match isn't found, another search will be done without the component name prefixed, i.e. vagrant.sh.
If the Packer component name is hyphenated, an intermediate search will be done between the component name search and the base search. This intermediate search will use the first part of the hyphenated name as the parent directory to the requested resource, e.g. amazon in addition to amazon-ebs.
Supporting component names in the search path allow for the resources to be specified within a build template in a manner that's more useful for Packer templates while still supporting segregation of source files by usage, e.g. shell scripts in the shell directory, ansible playbooks in ansible, etc. helping to keep them organized on the source side.'
If searching for the chef.cfg file, Feedlot would do up to three searches using the above search paths.
The first search would use the full component name as the parent directory of chef.cfg. It's first search would be: src_dir/build_name/chef-solo/chef.cfg.
If chef-solo/chef.cfg was not found in any of the searched directories, Feedlot would then look for the file using the Packer component's base name, chef, as the parent directory. This only applies to Packer components that have a hyphenated name. The second search would start at src_dir/build_name/chef/chef.cfg
If chef/chef.cfg was not found ini any of the searched directories, Feedlot would finally look for the resource with just it's path. The final search would start at src_dir/build_name/chef.cfg
The Feedlot repo has an examples directory which contains example configurations and source files. The example configurations are in both TOML and JSON. These files can be used as a reference to create new build configurations. They can also be used for building example Packer templates using the eg flag. The example directory location can also be specified using the example_dir flag or setting. When the eg flag is used, Feedlot will look only use the examples directory.
If one wants an example of how a particular supported Packer component template definition may look, the examples contains a build with all supported Packer components using only the setting required by Packer. There is one defined for each supported distro and most of their releases: e.g. cent7-64-required or 1504-64-required. These definitions are in the examples/conf/{format}/requuired.{format} files.
The output of a Feedlot build is 1 or more Packer templates and their resources. Each Packer template will be in its own directory, which is commonly the build name from which the template was created. This is defined by the Feedlot template's output_dir setting.
Each supported Packer component has various configuration options. Any required configuration option is supported and a missing required element will result in a processing error, with the information logged to the Log. Most optional configuration options are supported, any that are not will be listed under as a not supported configuration option in that section's comments. If there are any options defined in the template that either do not exist for or are not supported by that Packer section type, a warning message will be logged, but the processing of the template will continue.
Some supported Packer section types may have unsupported settings. Usually these are settings that contain an object, though some others may not be supported either. For detailed information, please check the docs.
* centos - support for setting ISO information for 7 not implemented.
* debian
* ubuntu
* amazon-chroot
* amazon-ebs
* amazon-instance
* digitalocean
* docker
* googlecompute
* null
* virtualbox-iso
* virtualbox-ovf
* vmware-iso
* vmware-vmx
Feedlot also has a common builder which can contain settings which may exist in more than 1 builder, e.g. iso_checksum. Feedlot will merge all common builder settings with each defined builder. In situations where a key exists in both the common builder and a supported builder, the supported builder's value will apply. Any settings that are defined in the common builder will be ignored if a supported builder does not support that key.
* atlas
* compress
* docker-import
* docker-push
* docker-save
* docker-tag
* vagrant
* vagrant-cloud
* vsphere
* ansible-local
* chef-client
* chef-solo
* file-uploads
* puppet-masterless
* puppet-server
* salt-masterless
* shell
* build <build_name>...
* help
* run <buil_list>...
* version
feedlot build [flags] buildNames...
Supported Flags:
* -distro=<distro name>
* -arch=<architecture>
* -image=<image>
* -release=<release>
If the -distro flag is passed, a build based on the default setting for the distro will be created. The additional flags allow for runtime overrides of the distro defaults for the target ISO. This flag can be used in conjunction with named builds. If both the -distro flag is passed along with a space separated list of one or more named builds are passed to the build sub-command, both the default Packer template for the distro and all of the Packer templates for the passed build names will be created.
default: true
The include_component_string is a Feedlot build setting that controls whether or not the name of the Packer component for which the resource will be used should be prepended as the parent directory to that resource in the Packer template.
This is useful for keeping various packer resources in separate directories by usage. It also makes specifying the resource within the build template easier. One drawback to this is that the component name may not be the desired value, but it will still work, e.g. scripts is a more common name for the directory within a Packer template containing the shell scripts, using the component name, the directory would be shell instead.
Example:
In a Feedlot build template, a list of shell scripts may be:
[provisioners.shell.arrays]
scripts = [
"setup.sh",
"vagrant.sh",
"sudoers.sh",
"cleanup.sh",
]
With include_component_string set to true, the Packer template section would look like:
"provisioners": [
{
"type": "shell",
"scripts": [
"shell/setup.sh",
"shell/vagrant.sh",
"shell/sudoers.sh",
"shell/cleanup.sh"
]
}
]
And the files would be copied to:
packer_template/shell/setup.sh
packer_template/shell/vagrant.sh
packer_template/shell/sudoers.sh
packer_template/shell/cleanup
With include_component_string set to false, the Packer template section would look like:
"provisioners": [
{
"type": "shell",
"scripts": [
"setup.sh",
"vagrant.sh",
"sudoers.sh",
"cleanup.sh"
]
}
]
And the files would be copied to:
packer_template/setup.sh
packer_template/vagrant.sh
packer_template/sudoers.sh
packer_template/cleanup
For builders that require the iso information, you can specify your own information by populating the iso_url or iso_urls, iso_checksum, and iso_checksum_type settings. If these settings are not set, Feedlot will look-up the information for you. For CentOS, this will result in a random mirror being chosen, unless you have specified the mirror in the base_url field.
Please file an issue for any key resources that are copied but shouldn't be.
While Feedlot ensures that most referenced resources are copied to the resulting template, this does not apply to key files. When generating Packer templates, Feedlot does not attempt to locate any referenced key files. It is assumed that these keys will be in the location specified in the template. This also applies to Chef's secret data bags.
Please file an issue for an issue for any questions, bugs, changes, wishes, etc. that you may have related to Feedlot. Better yet, submit a pull request when applicable!
Refactor handling of environment variables.