berks-chef-ecosystem.md

brevity isn't my strongest skill but I'm seriously going to try here

Questions first

• Is berkshelf becoming a core chef dep?
• Is berkshelf becoming a core chef workflow dep?
• If so, why? (what gap is it filling?)
• If so, is it being rolled into chef proper?
• If not, why is it not being rolled into Chef proper?

Now why this all matters

You might wonder why people care? Excluding the fact that the Berkshelf workflow doesn't work for everyone, here's the biggest problem (at least to me):

Berks3 now requires an API endpoint

Do you see the concern here? No longer is chef-solo really solo. It's now "chef-solo + connect to some api endpoint to find deps for that cookbook you just snagged from the community site".

I'm not saying that any of this is the case but again, there's a mixed message here. Berkshelf (again regardless of opinion on the tool itself) is being baked into A LOT of stuff now. It also has this external dependency on an internet service. Saying that I have to run a service locally to use cookbooks from the community site? You have to see why that's a concerning issue.

I would wager that workflow and requirement is more unacceptable to folks than acceptable to folks. I don't want to have to fire up chef-zero (as awesome as it is) to run chef-solo and I certainly don't ALSO want to have to fire up chef-zero and a berkshelf-api endpoint just to run chef-solo.

There's a lot of conflicting changes that have landed with zero communication from Ops..errr..Chef about what's going on and what this means long term.

Looks like this is the ChefDK, referred to above: https://github.com/opscode/chef-dk

Thanks, Jamie.

tl;dr - nobody is foisting berkshelf on you. You won't need a service to use Chef Solo, or anything else. If you want to use Berkshelf, we're making it easier to do, precisely so you don't wind up suffering from a pile of unreleased or difficult dependencies.

The Chef DK also has features like easily customizable generators, so it will be just as easy to have a supported workflow that has nothing to do with Berks, Test Kitchen, or anything else.

The Berks API resolver most likely becomes the standard community site API over time, or at least an extension of it. It is, and will be, open source, just like the rest of the code for the rebuilt community site.

The only changes that have landed were changes to Omnibus - which, I agree, we didn't communicate clearly enough with external folks who rely on the code.

I updated my chef solo workflow for berkshelf 3. Here's an example if anyone needs a chef solo working example. https://github.com/Jsnrkd/chef-gm