[chef] Re: Re: RE: Augeas support

[Andrea Campi < >]

Speaking as someone who uses FreeBSD and so is often affected by changes on other platforms:

I don't mind, it's worth it.

I want to manage the complete state of my machines with Chef, even if that means straying from the defaults set by the platform, or even from its conventions.

Case in point: the Apache cookbook "forces" the Debian config layout on all other distros.

And to me that's a feature, because I couldn't care less about what the FreeBSD or Debian projects think it's "the best way": what I care about is consistency within my organization.

Of course that just shuffles the decision of what "the best way" is to the cookbook author (whether that may be the community or an employee).

And so my take on the specific problem at hand is: maybe today you only modify one line; but maybe in 3 month you'll need to edit 5 more. Better bite the bullet and bring it all under control.

And sure, after each release you will have to verify and test--but that's the case no matter what.

If you weren't using Chef, would you just roll out a PHP upgrade to production without checking what changes your distro made to php.ini?

I wouldn't, and Chef doesn't change the process much.

On Sat, Feb 16, 2013 at 5:23 PM, Sam Darwin < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

To summarize what Kevin said:

- You have a long and interesting config file with hundreds of lines.    This
file does change from version to version of the software.

- You want to change only one line such as timezone, and nothing more.

Given this scenario, which is better:  to modify a single line of the config
file, or to manage the entire file.

If you manage the entire file, you are compelled to be aware of the differences
from version to version, and also from OS to OS.   It's a rather big task.    A
new version of the software will break your cookbook.    A release on a
different operating system such as FreeBSD might break your cookbook.

On the other hand, if you tweak one single config parameter such as timezone..
well, that's all that you do.