[chef-dev] Chef 11 Client Beta

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

Hi Chefs,

We've released Chef 11 Client beta to rubygems.org, and would love your feedback.

## Highlights

* `chef-apply` command: run a single recipe file

* Partials in templates: there is a `render` method in templates that renders the content from another template and inserts it.

* inline compile mode for LWRPs: LWRPs that work by composing other chef resources can opt in to inline compile mode to get automatic notification triggering

* output formatters: These were introduced in 10.14 but are now the default when running chef in the console

* rewritten attribute implementation: fixes several outstanding (and surprising) issues with attributes behavior; role and environment attributes are visible to attributes files.

* chef-client run lock: there is a configurable run lock to prevent accidentally running more than one instance of chef-{client,solo} at a time

* delayed notifications run on failure: delayed notifications run even if the chef-client run has failed

* encrypted data bag item format change: fixes bugs with incompatible YAML engines in different ruby versions, improved security

* Improved configuration parameter handling in knife: Knife now automatically merges default values, Chef::Config[:knife] (i.e., knife.rb) settings, and command line options in the correct order.

## Installing

If you install with gems: `gem install chef --pre`

We're working on omnibus packages but have some kinks to work out on some Solaris and Windows 2003 tests. In the meantime, you can probably update an existing omnibus install via `/opt/chef/embedded/bin/gem install chef --pre`. This may cause grumpiness in your package manager in future upgrades so be careful if you're doing this on a not-throwaway machine.

We'll update the list when omnibus packages become available.

## More information

A list of breaking changes is maintained on the wiki:

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Breaking+Changes+in+Chef+11

Non-breaking changes/new features are listed in a section at the bottom of the page.

Feel free to follow up with any questions, and file any bugs you find on tickets.opscode.com.

Thanks,

-- 

Daniel DeLeo