[chef] sourcing ingredients from your local store for use within your recipes

[Chris McClimans < >]

I wrote some knife plugins that download the latest version of
chef_client, chef_server, ubuntu, windows, and vagrant, into the
:file_cache_path and then populate data_bags with semantic versions,
architecture, checksums, os ver supported etc:

* https://github.com/hh/cloud-kitchen/tree/master/.chef/plugins/knife
* https://github.com/hh/cloud-kitchen/tree/master/data_bags

I then do searches in my recipes to grab the latest, but have the
desired version able to be set as an attribute.
.
* 
https://github.com/ii-cookbooks/ii-fileserver/blob/master/recipes/cache-files.rb#L2
* 
https://github.com/ii-cookbooks/ii-chef-server/blob/master/recipes/lxc-osc-download.rb#L7

I thought about putting some of the resultant cached files into
files/default for various cookbooks before uploading to chef server so
end nodes need not have internet, only connections to the chef_server.
Or for chef-solo repos/cookbooks that would have batteries included as
this works with chef-solo if you add chef-search-solo to your runlist:

https://github.com/hh/cloud-kitchen/blob/master/.chef/create-usb-solo.rb#L17

These sourced ingredients / dynamic data bags backed by third party
cached files seems interesting to me and I wanted wider feedback /
audience.

Would a set of ingredients repos be useful for the community at large
beyond myself?

https://github.com/easybake-ingredients

Anyone see any interesting use cases for this?

* could cookbooks depend on versioned data bags created this way?
* the ingredient repos could be code reviewed separately from your cookbooks!
* the populated cache could be easily copied to usb or a file share etc