[chef-dev] Re: cookbook vs gem

[Noah Kantrowitz < >]

So this is a somewhat contentious issue among a few of us, but the short 
answer is "not much if done correctly". The biggest difference is that 
cookbooks have more file structure than a gem for things like cookbook files 
and templates. A few people are starting to experiment more with managing the 
bulk of their chef code as plain gems and I'm starting work on a tool to 
automatically  convert a gem to a cookbook as part of its release cycle.

--Noah

On May 8, 2014, at 4:51 AM, Dennis 
<
 >
 wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> the design decision I love most about chef is that one has the full 
> featured ruby language at
> hand. The main method of packaging and distributing ruby chef code is via 
> cookbooks - one could
> think of them as chef code libraries, so in fact a subset of generic ruby 
> libraries. The most
> important tools to manage our cookbooks are some SCM like git and 
> berkshelf. Berkshelf looks very
> similar to bundler.
> 
> Up to now I could not answer myself the question: Why are cookbooks 
> different from gems?
> 
> People are developing cookbook repository servers with indexes, 
> state-of-the-art APIs and all that
> cool stuff. As I understand, there are not any good solutions to mirror the 
> official or even host
> your own gem repository. What about features like signed cookbooks/gems? My 
> point is, I have a
> strong feeling we could benefit from collaboration with the rubygems 
> project (and vice versa).
> 
> I would claim that the most important features of our cookbook stack 
> overlaps with gems and it
> feels to me like reinventing the wheel just because it is perceived as 
> seperate domains of
> concerns.
> 
> I am writing to this list to ask you, if I am missing a major point?! Is 
> anyone aware of
> discussions, articles, projects or efforts on consolidating cookbooks and 
> gems?
> 
> I greatly appreciate your feedback!
> 
> Best regards,
> Dennis
>

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