[chef] Re: conflict between using environments to manage cookbook releases and to manage application environments

[Brian Akins < >]

We started using chef before chef environments existed. We use an attribute 
-- "scope" -- that represented dev, ref, prod, etc.  Search queries generally 
always include "AND scope:#{node[:scope]}"*  Since 0.10 came out, we've been 
using environments primarily to control cookbook versions. We do a lot of 
canary deploys and using environments to control search queries, for example, 
would make this more difficult (I think).  We primarily treat an environment 
as a "release."  


*We wrote a search wrapper similar to 
https://github.com/infochimps-labs/ironfan-pantry/tree/master/cookbooks/silverware
 that includes scope and a few other attributes automatically.