[chef] Re: Re: Re: Cookbook reusability

[Nikolay Sturm < >]

* John E. Vincent (lusis) [2012-03-05]:
> Also, the post is awesome and very much appreciated. I just think that
> in a few areas it goes to far to the extreme. With proper attributes,
> there's no reason you need a distinct recipe JUST for group creation
> (and at worst case you've created an ordering issue that might not be
> readily apparent.

John, I agree with most of your comments in this thread, I would argue,
however, that my approach to code reuse (composable recipes) solves a
different problem than using attributes does.

IMHO attributes are primarily used to vary specific data points: which
username to use, which IP to bind to, which directory to install to...
While you can vary these things, you still have to agree to the
policies(?) set in place by the cookbook author: setup a local user and
group with the same name, linking executables to /usr/local/bin, ...
Composable recipes allow you to adapt these policy decisions without
much hassle.

After reading the responses to my post, I see other problems as possibly
more urgent for the community at large (comming up with clean cookbooks,
improving existing cookbooks instead of reinventing the wheel). I myself
will further explore composable recipes and see if the policies I talk
about are a real problem, or just a perceived one. ATM I honestly don't
know.

I would like to thank everyone for their feedback, it was really helpful
to me.

cheers,

Nikolay