[chef] Re: all attributes files get evaluated?

[Jeff Blaine < >]

On 10/31/2013 2:27 PM, Johnny Tan wrote:
> Are _all_ attribute files evaluated for all nodes in the same cookbook?
> (Assuming no conditionals that would exclude.)

Yes.

> For some reason, we thought we could have different "role recipes" that
> included different attribute files, rather than setting the attributes

I made this assumption too. I had an attributes/foo.rb that I
thought would only be used for recipes/foo.rb. I was wrong :)

> inside the recipe. But it wasn't working, and this page seems to confirm
> that all attribute files would be evaluated even if you're not
> intentionally "including" them:
> http://docs.opscode.com/essentials_cookbook_attribute_files.html
> 
> If that's the case, what's the best practice here? To _only_ put default
> values in any attributes file, and then set role differences inside role
> recipes? (We're starting to move to role recipes, but we might have
> several roles within the same cookbook, so we were hoping to set each
> role's attributes with a different attributes file.)

Looking forward to others' info here as well.