[chef] Re: platform specific config in a cookbook's metadata.rb?

[Jay Feldblum < >]

Joe,

The metadata.rb file is actually a very thin wrapper around being a metadata.json file. You should only have static data in it because by the time knife uploads it to the chef-server, knife will be uploading the json version. The chef-server does not run any code at all from your cookbooks.

The typical patterns are: 1) to depend on all the platform-specific cookbooks; 2) to document all the platform-specific cookbooks for the sysadmin using chef and require the sysadmin to set up the run-lists/roles/top-level-cookbooks correctly, but not to depend on them; 3) to enhance Chef to understand platform-specific cookbooks.

Cheers,

Jay Feldblum