How do I build Vagrant boxes that are based on other Vagrant boxes?

[Jason Hsu]

I've used Packer to build Vagrant boxes from scratch, starting from a Debian Linux ISO.

Is there a way to build Vagrant boxes by starting with an existing Vagrant box instead of doing it from scratch?  For example, how would I build a box based on the generic/debian9 box available from Vagrant Cloud?  In the Docker world, the Dockerfile plays the same role that the *.json file does in Packer.  If you want to build a Docker image based on Debian Stretch, your Dockerfile would start with "FROM debian:stretch".  If you want to build a Docker image based on my minimal Debian Stretch image, your Dockerfile would start with "FROM rubyonracetracks/debian-stretch-min".

[Rickard von Essen]

There is a new Vagrant builder that can build from existing vagrant boxes. It has the limitation that the vagrant provider needs to implement package.

You can also use the other packer builder and build from a existing vagrant box if you extract the image from the source box and use the vagrant post-processor to again package it as a vagrant box. 

On Sat, Apr 13, 2019, 05:16 Jason Hsu <jhsu8...@gmail.com> wrote:

I've used Packer to build Vagrant boxes from scratch, starting from a Debian Linux ISO.

Is there a way to build Vagrant boxes by starting with an existing Vagrant box instead of doing it from scratch?  For example, how would I build a box based on the generic/debian9 box available from Vagrant Cloud?  In the Docker world, the Dockerfile plays the same role that the *.json file does in Packer.  If you want to build a Docker image based on Debian Stretch, your Dockerfile would start with "FROM debian:stretch".  If you want to build a Docker image based on my minimal Debian Stretch image, your Dockerfile would start with "FROM rubyonracetracks/debian-stretch-min".

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