[chef-dev] Re: Re: CHEF-2988 allowed_recipes, restricted_recipes, and override_recipes

[Chris Roberts < >]

On Wed, Mar 28, 2012 at 12:49 PM, Bryan McLellan < "> > wrote:

Again, as features, we're not convinced that the value of allowed and
restricted cookbooks are greater than what you can do with an override
runlist. Also we acknowledge that accepting these features comes at
the expense of added complexity to the user. This is part of the
"lockin" that I hinted at in my original mail to the list. The
individual issues that I found such as logging and accepting a
RunListItem where a recipe name was expected are certainly solvable,
but these underscore the cost of adding features like this upon a
broad community of users.

One use case presented was needing to prevent a yum cookbook from
being run on an Ubuntu system, which is preventing you from doing an
application deployment. However, this case can be handled will an
override run list without cost of an additional feature.

With regards to the same thing being accomplished with the allowed recipes via the run list override, I do agree. The run list override does provide the same functionality using a slightly different methodology. 

However, the restricted recipes provide something that the run list override cannot provide, which is disabling recipes via dependencies. This can be extremely useful when it is not readily apparent where a recipe inclusion is originating, especially when debugging.

As for the run list override, I will make the suggested modifications to the current implementation and submit a new pull request minus the recipe based options once I have them implemented and proper spec coverage on the new additions.

Thanks,

- Chris