[chef] Fw: [[chef-dev]] Will attribute merge ordering fix for nested roles be merged in 0.10.0?

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

Forwarding this to the primary list so everyone can chime in. I don't have a strong opinion either way, but I would like to ensure there is strong support for changing the current behavior before going ahead with this.

To summarize the issue for those unfamiliar:

Given:

* A role "base"

* A role "appserver" that includes role "base"

When both roles set an attribute, which one should "win"? E.g., if both "base" and "appserver" define an attribute "logrotate_days", but you have:

* base: logrotate_days => 5

* appserver: logrotate_days => 7

What should be the value of logrotate days when a node has the "appserver" role? The current behavior is that "base" wins, so logrotate_days would be 5, because it is included last. The bug report asserts that the behavior should be the opposite.

Thanks,
-- 
Dan DeLeo

Forwarded message:

From: Leinartas, Michael < >
To: < >
Date: Thursday, March 17, 2011 10:05:16 AM
Subject: [[chef-dev]] Will attribute merge ordering fix for nested roles be merged in 0.10.0?

Some background:

http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-1508

http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-1354 (linked from previous)

http://lists.opscode.com/sympa/arc/chef/2010-06/msg00013.html (linked from previous)

The last link has a good summary of use case at the top.  Last update was that this was potentially a breaking change and so had to wait until 0.10.0 to be considered.  I'm wondering if there's been any discussion on including it.  I personally feel that the current behavior is very unintuitive and generally undesirable, but perhaps there are use cases I haven't considered. 

FWIW I've been running my chef clients with this patch from 0.9.8 through 0.9.14 without issue.