Hauler Collections

Collections are the building blocks of Hauler. A collection is a grouping of one or more pieces of content - images, charts, and files - that together represent a desired end result, such as everything needed to stand up a particular application. One or more collections, in turn, make up the Haul you carry across the airgap. See Core Concepts for how content, collections, and hauls nest together.

Grouping content into collections means you describe an outcome ("the artifacts for product X at version Y") once, then fetch, store, and distribute that whole set as a unit rather than tracking each artifact by hand.

Community Collections

While collections and content are built into Hauler, the goal is to empower operators to define and share their own. A community collection is just a curated Hauler manifest - a version-controlled YAML description of the images, charts, and files an application needs - that anyone can apply with hauler store sync:

hauler store sync --filename collection.yaml

Because a collection is plain YAML, it can be checked into source control, reviewed, and reused across teams and environments, giving you full control over your artifacts.

Note: Community Collections are an evolving area of Hauler. Defining and sharing reusable collections is an active focus, and your feedback is appreciated!

RGS Carbide Collections

For supported customers of Rancher Government, under the umbrella of Rancher Government Carbide, Hauler can import predefined collections for Rancher products directly - making it seamless to airgap any of the Rancher products or projects.

These collections are fetched from a product registry (the Carbide Secured Registry (CSR) by default) using the --products flag, specified as name=version:

# sync a single product collection
hauler store sync --products rancher=v2.10.1

# sync multiple product collections
hauler store sync --products rancher=v2.10.1,rke2=v1.31.5+rke2r1

You can preview a product's resolved collection manifest without writing anything to the store by adding --dry-run:

hauler store sync --products rke2=v1.31.5+rke2r1 --dry-run

See the hauler store sync reference for the full workflow, and RGS Carbide Customers for more on the Carbide Secured Registry. If you haven't heard of Rancher Government Carbide, check it out here!