# Cookbook documentation and yard-chef

**URL:** <https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245>\
**Category:** Chef Infra (archive)\
**Created:** [October 31, 2012, 12:05am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245 "2012-10-31T00:05:09Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![steve](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/steve/32/294_2.png) [@steve](https://discourse.chef.io/u/steve)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2012, 12:05am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/1 "2012-10-31T00:05:09Z")

</div>

Hi everybody,

I was thinking about how to ensure that people are documenting their  
cookbooks and came across a YARD Chef plugin that the folks at Rightscale  
were working on (and may have abandoned?) about a year ago.

Anyway, it almost pretty much was in a working state so I gave it an extra  
push and now have it serving documentation sites off of a Chef repository  
and generating documentation coverage statistics.

So, if you haven't solved this problem for yourself already, take a look:

> **[leftathome/yard-chef](https://github.com/leftathome/yard-chef)**
>
> YARD plugin for Chef. Point it at a Chef repository and watch it run... - leftathome/yard-chef

If you _have_ solved this problem already in a much more awesome way, I'd  
love to hear about it and hopefully follow your example!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alfredo\_Palhares](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/alfredo_palhares/32/335_2.png) [@Alfredo\_Palhares](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Alfredo_Palhares)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2012, 10:08am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/2 "2012-10-31T10:08:43Z")

</div>

This is interesting, I shall try it on the cookbook i am doing at the moment

–  
Regards,  
Alfredo Palhares

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cary\_Penniman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/cary_penniman/32/366_2.png) [@Cary\_Penniman](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Cary_Penniman)\
**Post date:** [October 31, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/3 "2012-10-31T12:48:37Z")

</div>

Hey Steve,

Just a quick note to let you know that we have not abandoned this project.  
Just putting some finishing touches on it (like support for README.md) and  
hope to have the first version out soon. We will make a post to this  
mailing list when it is ready to go. Please feel free to make pull  
requests and/or open up new issues on this project as you find them.

Hope it works for ya'!

-Cary Penniman

On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 5:05 PM, steve . [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:

> Hi everybody,
> 
> I was thinking about how to ensure that people are documenting their  
> cookbooks and came across a YARD Chef plugin that the folks at Rightscale  
> were working on (and may have abandoned?) about a year ago.
> 
> Anyway, it almost pretty much was in a working state so I gave it an extra  
> push and now have it serving documentation sites off of a Chef repository  
> and generating documentation coverage statistics.
> 
> So, if you haven't solved this problem for yourself already, take a look:
> 
> [GitHub - leftathome/yard-chef: YARD plugin for Chef. Point it at a Chef repository and watch it run...](https://github.com/leftathome/yard-chef)
> 
> If you _have_ solved this problem already in a much more awesome way, I'd  
> love to hear about it and hopefully follow your example!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![steve](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/steve/32/294_2.png) [@steve](https://discourse.chef.io/u/steve)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2012, 11:08pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/4 "2012-11-02T23:08:43Z")

</div>

Hi Cary,

Glad to hear the project is still being developed. I've made a few changes but they're pretty minor (template bug fixes, etc).

I'm thinking of adding a parser for cookbook attribute files, since a lot of folks (myself included) don't document attributes in the cookbook metadata.

Does this sound useful to the community or am I simply helping to propagate a bad practice? 🙂

(I would potentially extend this to node.set() in recipes once we get our Chef 11 on.)

Looking forward to the next yard-chef release!

(mobile edition)

On Oct 31, 2012, at 5:48 AM, Cary Penniman [cary@rightscale.com](mailto:cary@rightscale.com) wrote:

> Hey Steve,
> 
> Just a quick note to let you know that we have not abandoned this project. Just putting some finishing touches on it (like support for README.md) and hope to have the first version out soon. We will make a post to this mailing list when it is ready to go. Please feel free to make pull requests and/or open up new issues on this project as you find them.
> 
> Hope it works for ya'!
> 
> -Cary Penniman
> 
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 5:05 PM, steve . [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > Hi everybody,
> > 
> > I was thinking about how to ensure that people are documenting their cookbooks and came across a YARD Chef plugin that the folks at Rightscale were working on (and may have abandoned?) about a year ago.
> > 
> > Anyway, it almost pretty much was in a working state so I gave it an extra push and now have it serving documentation sites off of a Chef repository and generating documentation coverage statistics.
> > 
> > So, if you haven't solved this problem for yourself already, take a look:
> > 
> > [GitHub - leftathome/yard-chef: YARD plugin for Chef. Point it at a Chef repository and watch it run...](https://github.com/leftathome/yard-chef)
> > 
> > If you _have_ solved this problem already in a much more awesome way, I'd love to hear about it and hopefully follow your example!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Torben\_Knerr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@Torben\_Knerr](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Torben_Knerr)\
**Post date:** [November 3, 2012, 8:39am UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/5 "2012-11-03T08:39:43Z")

</div>

On Sat, Nov 3, 2012 at 12:08 AM, Steven Wagner [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:

> Hi Cary,
> 
> Glad to hear the project is still being developed. I've made a few  
> changes but they're pretty minor (template bug fixes, etc).
> 
> I'm thinking of adding a parser for cookbook attribute files, since a lot  
> of folks (myself included) don't document attributes in the cookbook  
> metadata.

Like it, encouraging documentation of attributes in metadata.rb is a good  
thing 🙂

> Does this sound useful to the community or am I simply helping to  
> propagate a bad practice? 🙂
> 
> (I would potentially extend this to node.set() in recipes once we get our  
> Chef 11 on.)
> 
> Looking forward to the next yard-chef release!
> 
> (mobile edition)
> 
> On Oct 31, 2012, at 5:48 AM, Cary Penniman [cary@rightscale.com](mailto:cary@rightscale.com) wrote:
> 
> Hey Steve,
> 
> Just a quick note to let you know that we have not abandoned this project.  
> Just putting some finishing touches on it (like support for README.md) and  
> hope to have the first version out soon. We will make a post to this  
> mailing list when it is ready to go. Please feel free to make pull  
> requests and/or open up new issues on this project as you find them.
> 
> Hope it works for ya'!
> 
> -Cary Penniman
> 
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 5:05 PM, steve . [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > Hi everybody,
> > 
> > I was thinking about how to ensure that people are documenting their  
> > cookbooks and came across a YARD Chef plugin that the folks at Rightscale  
> > were working on (and may have abandoned?) about a year ago.
> > 
> > Anyway, it almost pretty much was in a working state so I gave it an  
> > extra push and now have it serving documentation sites off of a Chef  
> > repository and generating documentation coverage statistics.
> > 
> > So, if you haven't solved this problem for yourself already, take a look:
> > 
> > [GitHub - leftathome/yard-chef: YARD plugin for Chef. Point it at a Chef repository and watch it run...](https://github.com/leftathome/yard-chef)
> > 
> > If you _have_ solved this problem already in a much more awesome way, I'd  
> > love to hear about it and hopefully follow your example!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Cary\_Penniman](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/discourse.chef.io/cary_penniman/32/366_2.png) [@Cary\_Penniman](https://discourse.chef.io/u/Cary_Penniman)\
**Post date:** [November 5, 2012, 5:02pm UTC](https://discourse.chef.io/t/cookbook-documentation-and-yard-chef/3245/6 "2012-11-05T17:02:58Z")

</div>

I like the idea of the attribute parser. We do use the metadata in our  
cookbooks, but only for attributes that we want to expose in our UI.  
Ideally we would support attributes defined both in the attributes files  
and as well as those in the metadata.

Any pull requests are greatly appreciated!

-Cary P

On Fri, Nov 2, 2012 at 4:08 PM, Steven Wagner [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:

> Hi Cary,
> 
> Glad to hear the project is still being developed. I've made a few  
> changes but they're pretty minor (template bug fixes, etc).
> 
> I'm thinking of adding a parser for cookbook attribute files, since a lot  
> of folks (myself included) don't document attributes in the cookbook  
> metadata.
> 
> Does this sound useful to the community or am I simply helping to  
> propagate a bad practice? 🙂
> 
> (I would potentially extend this to node.set() in recipes once we get our  
> Chef 11 on.)
> 
> Looking forward to the next yard-chef release!
> 
> (mobile edition)
> 
> On Oct 31, 2012, at 5:48 AM, Cary Penniman [cary@rightscale.com](mailto:cary@rightscale.com) wrote:
> 
> Hey Steve,
> 
> Just a quick note to let you know that we have not abandoned this project.  
> Just putting some finishing touches on it (like support for README.md) and  
> hope to have the first version out soon. We will make a post to this  
> mailing list when it is ready to go. Please feel free to make pull  
> requests and/or open up new issues on this project as you find them.
> 
> Hope it works for ya'!
> 
> -Cary Penniman
> 
> On Tue, Oct 30, 2012 at 5:05 PM, steve . [leftathome@gmail.com](mailto:leftathome@gmail.com) wrote:
> 
> > Hi everybody,
> > 
> > I was thinking about how to ensure that people are documenting their  
> > cookbooks and came across a YARD Chef plugin that the folks at Rightscale  
> > were working on (and may have abandoned?) about a year ago.
> > 
> > Anyway, it almost pretty much was in a working state so I gave it an  
> > extra push and now have it serving documentation sites off of a Chef  
> > repository and generating documentation coverage statistics.
> > 
> > So, if you haven't solved this problem for yourself already, take a look:
> > 
> > [GitHub - leftathome/yard-chef: YARD plugin for Chef. Point it at a Chef repository and watch it run...](https://github.com/leftathome/yard-chef)
> > 
> > If you _have_ solved this problem already in a much more awesome way, I'd  
> > love to hear about it and hopefully follow your example!

--  
Cary Penniman  
Sr. Software Developer  
[www.RightScale.com](http://www.RightScale.com) [http://www.rightscale.com/](http://www.rightscale.com/)

Phone: (805) 243-0222  
Email: [cary@rightscale.com](mailto:cary@rightscale.com)  
Skype: carypenniman