[chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: application builds/ci involving Chef

[Matthias Marschall < >]

Even though my team is doing both: developing application features as well as 
Chef cookbooks we see the disconnect. We've two separate repositories and 
developers do _not_ work on Chef configured Vagrant boxes all the time. They 
only use Vagrant when they're changing cookbooks.
Additionally we've split configuration values between our Rails app (in 
environments) and Chef.
The only place where app and infrastructure mingle is our staging environment 
so far. 

We're planning to setup a CI using Chef to create the VMs to run the tests. 
But we're not there yet :-(

> Interesting that you say that about Noah.  My current client is looking at 
> a service management model to deal with configuration files, eliminating 
> Chef entirely from the mix. I have also discussed with a dev team shipping 
> in config files from artifact repository and we did it with overrideable 
> attributes, allowing someone else to use either a default template in the 
> library cookbook or supply their own in another cookbook or drop a template 
> on the server from elsewhere.  I guess my preference would be to eventually 
> have the templates parametrized so that anyone could use the same template.
> 
> But then the question arises, how do you deal with changing data?  For this 
> we have been using a combination of attributes and data bags. Chef solo 
> would be a viable option for workstation testing, but they'd still have to 
> check these things in and have build scripts that dealt with getting them 
> into the Chef server/org.  We have a lot of this now and it's just not 
> connected.
> 
> Maybe this is something that would actually work if you could get in front 
> of the development and build process and hand a dev team a working CI 
> process that involved Chef.  Lately I only get involved when it's too late 
> to do anything besides panic.
> 
> Sascha Bates | 
> 
 
>  | 612 850 0444 | 
> 
 
>  | 
> 
 
>  |
> On 1/27/13 9:14 AM, John E. Vincent (lusis) wrote:
>> One idea that EJ (your cohort on the podcast had) that I thought was 
>> brilliantly simple is to have the applications ship ERB templates for any 
>> conf files by default and let chef do its template magic with a local file 
>> instead of one in the repo.
>> 
>> The disconnect is always going to exist unless your dev team is willing to 
>> work with the chef repo. Frankly it's pretty unfair to ask that out id the 
>> gate and keeping the two in sync is painful.
>> 
>> The first motivation I had for the (sadly languishing) Noah was this exact 
>> use case.
>> 
>> On Jan 27, 2013 1:14 AM, "Sascha Bates" 
>> <
 >
>>  wrote:
>> >
>> > Thanks. I'm in an environment where we use jenkins and maven for a lot 
>> > of this at the moment. There's also some Vagrant/vbox in the mix as well 
>> > as Eclipse/STS. I'm not looking for pointers so much as being interested 
>> > in what others have found to be successful. 
>> >
>> > One of the problems I see is that Chef code and Application code are 
>> > decoupled: different repos, different teams managing collections of 
>> > cookbooks, diverse environments. Dev teams don't think of Chef as part 
>> > of the code base and I believe that this has led to some dysfunctional 
>> > attitudes and behaviors. At the moment I'm noodling on methodology for 
>> > introducing a tool like Chef that decouples configuration code from 
>> > application logic.  
>> >
>> > So I guess I'm maybe not looking for deployment solutions so much as 
>> > wondering what people are doing to get their chef and app code working 
>> > together and how it's working out for them.
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> > Sascha Bates | 
>> > 
 
>> >  | 612 850 0444 | 
>> > 
 
>> >  | 
>> > 
 
>> >  |
>> > On 1/26/13 9:59 PM, Gourav Shah wrote:
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>> Is anyone here doing application builds (either yourself or for devs) 
>> >>> that involve any of the following:
>> >>>
>> >>> -Local (workstation) testing of a developed app with Chef housing 
>> >>> configuration files
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> For local development with chef managing configs, you could try using 
>> >> vagrant + chef 
>> >>  
>> >>>
>> >>> -Application bundling with ant, maven, groovy, scripts, whatever that 
>> >>> also includes parallel check-ins to Chef code?
>> >>> -CI testing of an application that builds an artifact but also has 
>> >>> configurations in Chef?
>> >>
>> >> I have used Jenkins + chef.  You could also add capistrano in the mix 
>> >> for deployment. 
>> >>
>> >> Thanks
>> >> Gourav
>> >
>> >
>