[chef] Re: should I be using chef?

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

On Monday, December 26, 2011 at 10:57 AM, Kelly Goedert wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I've read a bit about chef and I tried the tutorials in 
> http://devops.mashion.net/. after following the installation instructions ;
> on the site. I was able to follow it and see chef in action which is great. 
> After this, I can see an usage on managing server configs, which I want to 
> do on a future. For now, I was wondering if I could use chef to "manage" 
> developers environment like, installing and configuring eclipse, cvs, java 
> and whatever a developer might need to work. 
> 
> I know this is possible with chef for what I have seen. But is this usual? 
> Or I am trying to use the tool for something it is not really made for?
The overwhelming majority of Chef users are using Chef to manage servers, but 
it also works quite well for developer setup. At Opscode we use Chef to 
manage our developer workstations, and this has dramatically reduced the 
amount of setup time required for a new developer to get a test environment 
running. Pivotal Labs also uses Chef to manage workstations[1].

To my knowledge, most people managing workstations are using chef-solo, with 
developers updating the recipes at their leisure. This implies that your 
developers would get comfortable with basic Chef usage, but if workstation 
setup is a one-shot deal this isn't strictly required.
 
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Kelly 

1. 
http://pivotallabs.com/users/cunnie/blog/articles/1872-got-lion-now-get-everything-else-

HTH,

-- 
Dan DeLeo