[chef] Re: Branches as an alternative to environments?

[Adam Jacob < >]

On Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 8:20 AM, Michael Hale 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Has anyone thought about using git branches as an alternative to 
> environments?
>
> * Branches already provide a nice mechanism for associating a
> particular set of cookbook/role/data_bag versions together as a named
> thing.
> * git push chef-server master (ala heroku deploy) besides being really
> cool, could be really fast as well.
> * Using a branch keeps me from having to maintain cookbook version
> numbers manually.

We have thought about it. Environments give you a couple of things
that are hard to get if you just use git - the ability to manipulate
the environment via an API (think about compliance or approvals
workflows), the ability to be agnostic of source control choices, etc.

As for needing to maintain cookbook version numbers, I think it's
likely that we'll start auto-incrementing the patch number on cookbook
upload, or something similar - the dependency resolver in 0.10 is
pretty great, and can easily deal with ~> style operations.

If you really want this functionality, you could get it with the
environments API - it would be a post-commit hook and a few API calls.

Best,
Adam

-- 
Opscode, Inc.
Adam Jacob, Chief Product Officer
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