# COOK Development Focus

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/cook-development-focus/3946>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [May 2, 2013, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cook-development-focus/3946 "2013-05-02T15:50:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Joshua\_Timberman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/joshua_timberman/32/424_2.png) [@Joshua\_Timberman](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Joshua_Timberman)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 3:50pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cook-development-focus/3946/1 "2013-05-02T15:50:48Z")

</div>

Ohai,

In the near term, Opscode will focus our efforts related to our cookbooks (COOK project) on major, critical, or blocker bug fixes, resolving foodcritic “correctness” issues, and adding test coverage via test-kitchen 1.0. The purpose is to provide a higher standard of quality for cookbooks. As such, we may significantly refactor a number of cookbooks, including their recipes and resources.

Just so we’re on the same page, major, critical, and blocker bugs roughly fit this profile:

These bugs cause recipes or resources for the _default use case_ of the cookbook to cause an exception when running on platforms explicitly supported (either in metadata, “supports” or in the README). The severity will depend on what the workaround is for the issue (if any), and whether the bug is present in the latest “released” (on the Community site) version of the cookbook.

We will consider new features and improvements to cookbooks again at some point in the future.

The master branch of cookbooks is not necessarily fully tested _at this time_. One of our goals is to get all cookbooks supported with test-kitchen and running in our CI system, so we can know if the “master” branch is release-worthy.

New features and improvements such as adding support for platforms that Opscode does not primarily support, or adding command-line options or attributes for “flexibility” are not in scope for the near term; meaning we won’t review those in code review, nor work on development unless they’re directly part of a refactor. This is not permenant, but we want to be clear in case you’re wondering why we haven’t reviewed a ticket or pull request yet.

If you’d like to help, that’s awesome! You can help best in one of these ways:

- Search for open/in-progress/reopened tickets in COOK that are “major,” “critical,” or “blocker” severity and follow-up, ensure contributors (if any) have a CLA, or fix the bug(s). Use this handy search[0].

- Help maintain a cookbook! Contact me directly about the cookbook(s) you’re interested in helping maintain; you must have signed the CLA already and ideally contributed to that cookbook in the past.

- Help add test-kitchen 1.0 support. Since that project is still in active development, that means a bit more high-touch involvement, but it’s nearly ready, and certainly usable. #chef-hacking or the chef-dev list are great places to get help.

If you have questions or concerns, please email me directly, [joshua@opscode.com](mailto:joshua@opscode.com).

[0]: handy search! [http://tickets.opscode.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11797](http://tickets.opscode.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11797)

Thank you!  
Joshua Timberman, Opscode, Inc.  
@jtimberman

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**Author:** ![Mike](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/mike/32/18_2.png) [@Mike](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Mike)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cook-development-focus/3946/2 "2013-05-02T16:25:28Z")

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Thanks for the update, it's great to hear what the focus will be in  
the short term.

In the interest of helping out, can you point to a "good" reference  
cookbook, something that is not too hard to understand, and yet  
provides examples of testing for that cookbook? Whether they be  
test-kitchen or chefspec or what have you.

Thanks!  
-M

On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 11:50 AM, Joshua Timberman [joshua@opscode.com](mailto:joshua@opscode.com) wrote:

> Ohai,
> 
> In the near term, Opscode will focus our efforts related to our cookbooks (COOK project) on major, critical, or blocker bug fixes, resolving foodcritic "correctness" issues, and adding test coverage via test-kitchen 1.0. The purpose is to provide a higher standard of quality for cookbooks. As such, we may significantly refactor a number of cookbooks, including their recipes and resources.
> 
> Just so we're on the same page, major, critical, and blocker bugs roughly fit this profile:
> 
> These bugs cause recipes or resources for the _default use case_ of the cookbook to cause an exception when running on platforms explicitly supported (either in metadata, "supports" or in the README). The severity will depend on what the workaround is for the issue (if any), and whether the bug is present in the latest "released" (on the Community site) version of the cookbook.
> 
> We will consider new features and improvements to cookbooks again at some point in the future.
> 
> The master branch of cookbooks is not necessarily fully tested _at this time_. One of our goals is to get all cookbooks supported with test-kitchen and running in our CI system, so we can know if the "master" branch is release-worthy.
> 
> New features and improvements such as adding support for platforms that Opscode does not primarily support, or adding command-line options or attributes for "flexibility" are not in scope for the near term; meaning we won't review those in code review, nor work on development unless they're directly part of a refactor. This is not permenant, but we want to be clear in case you're wondering why we haven't reviewed a ticket or pull request yet.
> 
> If you'd like to help, that's awesome! You can help best in one of these ways:
> 
> - Search for open/in-progress/reopened tickets in COOK that are "major," "critical," or "blocker" severity and follow-up, ensure contributors (if any) have a CLA, or fix the bug(s). Use this handy search[0].
> 
> - Help maintain a cookbook! Contact me directly about the cookbook(s) you're interested in helping maintain; you must have signed the CLA already and ideally contributed to that cookbook in the past.
> 
> - Help add test-kitchen 1.0 support. Since that project is still in active development, that means a bit more high-touch involvement, but it's nearly ready, and certainly usable. #chef-hacking or the chef-dev list are great places to get help.
> 
> If you have questions or concerns, please email me directly, [joshua@opscode.com](mailto:joshua@opscode.com).
> 
> [0]: handy search! [http://tickets.opscode.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11797](http://tickets.opscode.com/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?mode=hide&requestId=11797)
> 
> Thank you!  
> Joshua Timberman, Opscode, Inc.  
> @jtimberman

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Joshua\_Timberman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/joshua_timberman/32/424_2.png) [@Joshua\_Timberman](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Joshua_Timberman)\
**Post date:** [May 2, 2013, 5:01pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cook-development-focus/3946/3 "2013-05-02T17:01:40Z")

</div>

Ohai,

On May 2, 2013, at 10:25 AM, Mike [miketheman@gmail.com](mailto:miketheman@gmail.com)  
wrote:

> In the interest of helping out, can you point to a "good" reference  
> cookbook, something that is not too hard to understand, and yet  
> provides examples of testing for that cookbook? Whether they be  
> test-kitchen or chefspec or what have you.

The following cookbooks are updated with test-kitchen 1.0 support:

- bluepill (minitest, test cookbook for resource)
- couchdb
- maven (minitest)
- yum (minitest, test cookbook for resource)
- zsh (minitest)

There are others, but those are ones I've run recently :).