[chef] Re: Lock vs. Snapshot

[Daniel DeLeo < >]

On Thursday, September 17, 2015 at 4:01 PM, Jos Backus wrote:
> Hi,
>  
> https://github.com/chef/chef-dk/blob/master/POLICYFILE_README.md talks ;
> about ‘lock’, but would ‘snapshot’ not be a better name? After all, it 
> looks like a snapshot of cookbooks and their metadata (although granted the 
> _effect_ is to lock machines in the policy group to those cookbooks). Maybe 
> I misunderstand?  
>  
> Jos  
“lock” and “lockfile" are the terms I’d expect people to be familiar with, as 
they're used by bundler and berkshelf and probably other tools as well.

To me the term “lock” feels more natural since you generally have 
dependencies that are floating to some degree (for example, if you specify a 
dependency in your metadata like “~> 2.0”) and you’re locking that to a 
specific version. Likewise, “snapshot” feels more like a “freeze frame” of a 
thing that’s changing naturally, like a nightly build of a project or 
something. I’m probably heavily biased by the way these terms are used 
elsewhere, but I suspect most users will have similar experiences with these 
terms.

--  
Daniel DeLeo