[chef] Re: Centralized cookbook-library repos vs distributed cookbook repos

[Joshua Sierles < >]

Hedge Hog,

Cookbook repos are more like small applications rather than libraries. The 
dependencies the cookbooks have on each other, on operating system versions 
and the lack of inheritance support for cookbook resources make sharing hard. 
My recommendation is not to expect to use any cookbook as-is, but rather use 
the ones you see as inspiration to create your own, or adopt the repo that 
most mirrors your needs and adapt as necessary. Recipes tend to be small and 
easily digestible. While I applaud the effort to share cookbooks, I don't see 
a big need for a blessed way to do it.

For example, our (37signals) repo changed a lot for Chef 0.8, and we are 
constantly updating them in a very opinionated way (for specific versions of 
software, for example). We don't try to support anything but the current 
version of Ubuntu we're using. We set defaults specific to our environment 
and sometimes skip steps that would make the repo easier to cargo cult. The 
Opscode repo, in contrast, tries to support many operating systems in its 
recipes.

I'm curious about others' opinions here.

Joshua

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