[chef] Re: Re: Re: An deep topic

[Adam Jacob < >]

We should clearly ship a /universe endpoint in the chef server.

As stewards of Berkshelf, we didn't take over the project from its authors - that was, I hope, quite clear. What we did commit to doing was helping develop it, maintain it, cover some of its costs, and start integrating it tightly into the Chef DK.

With vagrant-berkshelf, the reality is that it was a project created by people in our community, all of whom moved on from using it (and instead focused on Test Kitchen.) They then decided to no longer maintain it.

Within Chef Software, the Official Deal (tm) is that the tooling in the Chef DK is the tooling we're having our developers fine tune, because it's the best way forward (I love me some Vagrant, but supporting Docker, cloud providers, etc in Test Kitchen is better for cookbook development that needs it.) So there is no incentive to dedicate our resources to doing paid maintenance of vagrant-berkshelf, rather than shaving the yaks needed to bring some sanity to an ecosystem that had rapidly evolved. Hence, it needs a new maintainer who cares and loves it, just like its original authors did.

Lets get that API into Chef Server.

This message was dope, and you should write more of them without fear of hurting anyones feelings.

Adam

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 11:25 AM, Zac Stevens < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

On Tue, Jul 8, 2014 at 6:20 PM, Lamont Granquist < " target="_blank"> > wrote:

Just complaining about the berks API is bad signalling since it just causes flak to the people working on berkshelf.   What you want to signal is the chef server team that they should integrate the /universe endpoint, or that supermarket should be bundled with chef server, or other solutions like that. What the chef server team hears right now is that Berkshelf sucks, which sounds entirely like a Berkshelf problem.  That's not useful in helping them to determine what they could do better with the server code or packaging to help solve that problem -- and I'm fairly convinced that this is an ecosystem problem, and that Berkshelf is what it is because its been developed in isolation from work going on in the client and server, and that needs to change in order to make it better.

I've refrained from saying much publicly about the berks API precisely because I don't want to give flak to the people working on Berkshelf - that said, I would very much like to give a little flack to Chef (the company) about it.  Although the PR[1] announcing corporate stewardship of the project didn't say much about what that actually _meant_, I figured that it would mean a little less itch-scratching and a little more thought about how users would be adversely affected by changes.

Then the vagrant-berkshelf plugin was deprecated[2].  I understand why an open source team would do so, and I don't fault them for it - on the other hand, I would criticise Chef (the company) for that same decision.  I can only assume that Chef felt that their stewardship of Berkshelf didn't extend to vagrant-berkshelf - which is a shame, since test-kitchen isn't a replacement for every use case.

Onto Berkshelf 3, the first major release under Chef's stewardship.  Previously, I was perfectly happy using Hosted Chef as an artifact repository in my Berkshelf workflow.  With Berks 3, I now have to run my own berks API server to preserve that functionality.  I chose Hosted Chef to avoid running my own Chef server, so this really grates[3].  Again, I understand this decision by an open source team, but I'm left wondering where the corporate stewardship comes into it.

Here's the thing: Berkshelf 3 is great upgrade.  I put off updating to it for ages because of the amount of work involved, I still grumble about the API server every other day, but it's a net win all the same.  The individuals working on it deserve a great big round of applause.

So, here's my message to the Chef Server team (and Chef, the company, at large): Berkshelf 3 is a great tool, but it's let down by the fact that the API server as a separate dependency.  Please roll the API server into Chef Server - especially Hosted Chef - so that I can stop saying "Berkshelf 3 is a great too, but..." and start saying "Berkshelf 3 is a great tool!"

Thankyou,

Zac

1: http://www.getchef.com/blog/2013/11/12/opscode-to-steward-berkshelf/

2: https://sethvargo.com/the-future-of-vagrant-berkshelf/

3: for the moment, I only use Hosted Chef as an artifact repository - and pay nothing for the privilege.  I'd have made a lot more noise about this if I felt entitled to complain.