Packer Validate Action

These is unofficial Packer GitHub Actions which allows you to run packer validation and inspection on pull requests to review Packer template changes and potentially build on pull merge. Check out the official Packer documentation for further reference.

Runs packer validate *.json on pull request to validate the syntax and configuration of a template file in a directory If the validation fails, it will print out error as pull request comment. Check out the packer validate command for further reference.

Usage

YAML style

To configure the action simply add the following lines to your .github/workflows/packer-validate.yml workflow file:

name: Validate packer template file in a directory

on:
  pull_request:
jobs:
  packer_validate:
    runs-on: hashicorp/packer:1.6.4
    steps:
      - name: Packer validate template-y without argument
        uses: dawitnida/packer-github-actions/validate@master
        env:
          GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}
          TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME: ${{ env.TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME }}

Legacy

To check this in action, please check Packer actions demo project with a collection of sample packer template files.

Variables

• PACKER_ACTION_WORKING_DIR : Working directory
• TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME : Packer template file
• ACTION_COMMENT : Enable/Disable PR comment from validate result

workflow "packer validate docker-image-template" {
  resolves = "packer-validate-docker-image-template"
  on = "pull_request"
}

action "filter-open-synced-pr" {
  uses = "actions/bin/filter@master"
  args = "action 'opened|synchronize'"
}

# For single template (eg. dockers dir contains *.json template)
action "packer-validate-docker-image-template" {
  uses = "dawitnida/packer-validate-action@master"
  needs = "filter-open-synced-pr"
  secrets = [
    "GITHUB_TOKEN",
  ]
  env = {
    TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME = "*.json"
    PACKER_ACTION_WORKING_DIR = "dockers"
  }
}

workflow "packer validate template-x with var-file" {
  resolves = "packer-validate-template-x"
  on = "pull_request"
}

# For specific template file (eg. packer-template-x.json) with var-file (global-vars.json) arg
action "packer-validate-template-x" {
  uses = "dawitnida/packer-validate-action@master"
  needs = "filter-open-synced-pr"
  secrets = [
    "GITHUB_TOKEN",
  ]
  args = [
    "-var-file=global-vars.json",
  ]
  env = {
    TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME = "packer-template-x.json"
  }
}

workflow "packer validate template-y without arg" {
  resolves = "packer-validate-template-y"
  on = "pull_request"
}

# For specific template file (eg. packer-template-y.json) without any args
action "packer-validate-template-y" {
  uses = "dawitnida/packer-validate-action@master"
  needs = "filter-open-synced-pr"
  secrets = [
    "GITHUB_TOKEN",
  ]
  env = {
    TEMPLATE_FILE_NAME = "packer-template-y.json"
  }
}

Figure 1. Packer validate without args failed with a comment

Figure 2. Packer validate success & failed outputs

Figure 3. Packer validate complete check list diagram

License

The Dockerfile and associated scripts and documentation in this project are released under the Apache-2.0 License.

Author

Dawit Nida