[chef] Re: Re: Cookbook Architecture

[Jesse Nelson < >]

IMO coding the version into the cookbook is anti-pattern, as this is
what attributes are for.  In general on internal cookbooks I start
with that cookbook designed for whatever is currently being deployed.
Over time that may change and we will add support for the newer
version of whatever package.

That being said. I haven't really ever thought about encoding a
version into the recipe name, but if I did i would probably do it like
this:

in tomcat/recipes/
  default.rb
  _common.rb
  1.0.rb
  2.0.rb

in default.rb
  case node['tomcat']['version']
  when 1
    include_recipe "tomcat::1.0"
  when 2
    include_recipe "tomcat::2.0"
  end


I would still use attributes to drive which version, but now you have
a clean layout to handle all your versions and common bits. I can see
a benefit to breaking large cookbooks up this way, but that benefit is
for the maintainer(s).



On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 11:56 AM, Peter Donald 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Mostly we try to support multiple versions of a product through a single
> version of a cookbook. That way we can have the same cookbook deployed
> across dev/uat/staging/production but have different product versions in
> each environment. We have cases where there is differences in the install
> between different versions of the product we will often have a sprinkling of
> if's in the cookbook ala;
>
> if node['product']['version'] > '1.0'
>   # Do 1.0 magic
> else
>   # Do pre 1.0 magic
> end
>
> The main reason we do this is we can decouple the release process from the
> process that uploads/promotes cookbooks.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 18, 2012 at 1:30 AM, 
> <
 >
>  wrote:
>>
>> Hi Chefs,
>>
>> We have come across this design pattern many times when building out our
>> cookbooks and can't quite decide which makes the most sense. Do you write
>> your
>> cookbook such that the latest version of the cookbook can install any
>> version
>> of the application it is installing/configuring or do you create separate
>> versions of the cookbook for each version of the cookbook (i.e. each
>> cookbook
>> version installs only one version of the software)? The Opscode cookbooks
>> seem
>> to go with the first strategy but we have found we can make simpler
>> cookbooks
>> by going with the second strategy.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>
>
>
>
> --
> Cheers,
>
> Peter Donald