Strider is a minimal program that both helps test development environments and bakes cloud images.

You may think of it as Vagrant+Packer in one, reading from one config file vs two.

Strider also has some interesting ideas like post-bake provisioners, which run after a bake is done, doing something useful with AWS cycles you've already paid for. It is designed to evolve and will definitely grow over time, but wants to stay lightweight and minimalist, and fun to hack on.

Strider is brought to you by the guy who wrote Cobbler and Ansible (Michael DeHaan), and is named after Robert Plant's dog.

Come on now well let me tell you,
What you're missing, missing, 'round them brick walls.
-- Led Zeppelin, Bron-Y-Aur Stomp

pip install strider

# configure your setup and check this into your repo root
vim striderfile.py

# spin up new VMs and configure them
python striderfile.py --up

# make some changes and apply them without booting a new instance
python striderfile.py --provision

# log into a VM
python striderfile.py --ssh

# bake a cloud image and show the ID
python striderfile.py --bake [--auto-teardown]

# tear down the instances
python striderfile.py --destroy

vim examples/AWS_ansible/striderfile.py

Strider is/was developed for Ansible and AWS first, but other Virt plugins and Provisioners are SUPER welcome as long as the underlying tool is sufficiently notable and the code is clean. For instance, Google Compute Engine, Virtual Box, VMWare, Puppet, Chef, etc, are all fair game. Send along a pull request!

Apache 2. Program (C) Michael DeHaan, 2015