[chef] What is the cookbook development workflow in your team?

[Torben Knerr < >]

Hi everybody,

Happy New Year! :-)

This is my first post to this mailing list. I'm trying to implement a proper workflow for developing cookbooks within a small team. Coming from a slightly different background (Java, Maven and the like) I'm looking for some experience on how to implement a typical develop/test/release cycle in a Chef environment.  

So, assuming you are developing cookbooks in a team, how would you go for adding a new feature to a cookbook:

 (a) develop -> test (using Vagrant/Chef Solo) -> repeat develop/fix/test cycle until done -> upload to team's chef server

 (b) develop -> test (upload to a private chef server) -> repeat develop/fix/test cycle until done -> upload to team's chef server

 (c) develop -> test (upload directly to team's chef server) -> repeat develop/fix/test cycle until done

I'm especially interested in:

 1) at which point in time do you share your sources (git push)?

    - are you working on feature branches, then merge + push when done?

    - when do you increase the cookbook version? in the commit where you merge back to master?

    - when do you create the tag? everytime you commit something on master?

 2) at which point in time do you upload the cookbook to the team's chef server (knife upload)?

    - whenever you want to test something?

    - strictly only after creating a tag (i.e. releases only)? 

    - do you always freeze uploaded cookbooks?

    - do you allow to overwrite cookbooks at all?

 3) how do you handle releases?

    - is every upload to the chef repository automatically a (public?) release for you? 

    - do you have the release process (roughly: "run tests -> create tag -> upload cookbook") automated?

    - how do you handle cookbook dependencies when you release? do you allow for versionless cookbook depends?

Eager to hear your experiences. Any help is appreciated!

Cheers,

Torben