[chef] Re: Attribute Names

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

On Wednesday, March 20, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Matthew Sims wrote:

I'm mostly curious how others handle this.

We have a chef environment where attribute can be located in three

places;the cookbook attributes, environments and roles (and in some cases,

in other cookbooks.)

Having to figure out where an attribute is set is occasionally frustrating

when I have to search in several places.

An idea proposed was the have the taxonomy of the attribute define where

it is being set.

Example:

['example']['attr']['value'] if set in the cookbook's attributes.

['example']['env']['value'] if set in the environments.

['example']['node']['value'] if set in the node.

I understand this breaks the precedence structure of attributes as we now

having unique attribute names based on location.

But having to find where the attribute is set can be a bit tedious.

I'm curious how others handle this. What method do you use so that looking

at an attribute in a cookbook, they know where to go find it rather than

search for it.

--

Matthew Sims

At the last minute before shipping Chef 11, I added some debugging code I was using to chef core. It's only useful during a chef run, but hopefully you find it helpful.

Synopsis:

# Recipe:

require 'pp'

pp node.debug_value(:test, :source)

# Output:

[["set_unless_enabled?", false],

 ["default", "attributes default"],

 ["env_default", :not_present],

 ["role_default", "role default"],

 ["force_default", :not_present],

 ["normal", "attributes normal"],

 ["override", "attributes override"],

 ["role_override", "role override"],

 ["env_override", :not_present],

 ["force_override", :not_present],

 ["automatic", :not_present]]

More info:

Read http://www.opscode.com/blog/2013/02/05/chef-11-in-depth-attributes-changes/ and scroll to the "debugging attributes" section.

HTH,

-- 

Daniel DeLeo