[chef] Re: chef-client cookbook changes coming

[Joshua Timberman < >]

The COOK-2319 service changes are on master. Test Kitchen support in the 
repository is updated and everything looked good.

COOK-2856 and COOK-2858 are in a pull request (#100[0]). Please test! To do 
so, you can clone the repository and check out the `jtimberman/COOK-2856` 
branch. Test kitchen can be run (read the TESTING.md file), or you can upload 
the cookbook to your Chef Server - use environments to pin the version so you 
don't overwrite prod of course.

Please leave feedback on COOK-2856[1]. 

Thanks!
Joshua

[0]: https://github.com/opscode-cookbooks/chef-client/pull/100
[1]: http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-2856


On Jun 7, 2013, at 11:43 AM, Joshua Timberman 
<
 >
 wrote:

> Ohai Chefs,
> 
> I wanted to let you all know about some changes coming to Opscode's 
> chef-client cookbook. There are important notes here regarding backwards 
> compatibility.
> 
> # TL;DR:
> 
> We recommend that you pin your use of the chef-client cookbook to the 
> released 2.2.4 version. The master branch will get changes described below, 
> which may break compatibility. We want to minimize this, but we can't 
> predict everyone's use of this cookbook.
> 
> Plan accordingly :).
> 
> # Background
> 
> The chef-client cookbook has existed for a long time. Originally, it was 
> used to configure /etc/chef/client.rb and a chef-client daemon service with 
> chef-solo, before we had knife bootstrap and friends. The config recipe may 
> be less necessary with knife bootstrap, but the service management recipe 
> is important because our Omnibus package doesn't install a service.
> 
> Given its age and scope over time, the cookbook has undergone a number of 
> changes, particularly adding support for other platforms in the service 
> management recipes. Overall it works, but there are changes that require a 
> fair amount of refactoring. This is all collected under a task ticket:
> 
> http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-2855
> 
> Some of the more important foundational changes are described below.
> 
> # Config Recipe
> 
> Work tracked in this ticket:
> 
> http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-2856
> 
> This adds a new sub-attribute, node['chef_client']['config']. In the 
> client.rb.erb, we walk through this hash of options and their values, and 
> write out the /etc/chef/client.rb. The commit referenced in the ticket has 
> an initial implementation.
> 
> We plan to also implement a "conf.d" style of configuration inclusion via 
> COOK-2858.
> 
> http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-2858
> 
> This will allow users to drop off any arbitrary additional configuration 
> for /etc/chef/client.rb similar to other tools that do "configuration 
> includes."
> 
> # Service Recipes
> 
> Via COOK-2319
> 
> http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-2319
> 
> We've split up the "service" recipe into multiple recipes, one for each 
> "service type" (init, runit, smf, etc). Now the init_style attribute will 
> include the appropriate recipe. Or, you can opt to just include the service 
> recipe you want on the appropriate nodes. 
> 
> This ticket also covers some use cases of running chef-client on a node 
> that is also the chef-server. 
> 
> # Call for Testing
> 
> We need your help testing. As I mentioned, we can't imagine every use case 
> here. While we can't workaround all changes, we do want to make the next 
> version as widely useful as possible.
> 
> Please help test. Normally we don't recommend the master branch for 
> cookbooks but obviously the released version won't have these changes yet.
> 
> # Compatibility
> 
> We've tried to make everything backwards compatible as much as possible. 
> However, this is definitely one of those "have to break some eggs to make 
> an omlette" topics. We feel that the benefits outweight the negatives here, 
> especially for those who want more flexibility out of this cookbook. This 
> also builds directly on work we're doing internally, so we will use this 
> too :-).
> 
> The target Chef version for this cookbook is Chef 11. After scanning 
> through COOK, I didn't see any obvious show stopping bugs for the current 
> version on Chef 10, so 2.2.4 should work for most folks.
> 
> Cheers,
> Joshua