Execute a single Chef recipe with chef-recipe command

Bryan_Berry · November 18, 2012, 9:58am

Hey Chefs,

I have started training more ppl at $DAYJOB and found that I need a quicker
way get new users started with Chef. I usually only have 20-30 minutes
maximum to get a user started with Chef. Explaining resources, recipes,
cookbooks, roles, environments, etc. easily takes up 1 hour. I needed a way
to give my users comfortable w/ the ideas of resources and the concept of a
recipe w/ in w/in 20 minutes. The user also needs to do something hands-on
w/in that 20 minutes. In the 2nd training session i would introduce
chef-solo and cookbooks.

To this end I have created chef-recipe
https://github.com/bryanwb/chef-recipe, which evaluates a single recipe
chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel
DeLeo (thanks Dan!) It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

You can install chef-recipe as a gem gem install chef-recipe

chef-recipe is meant only as a training tool and not to be used for any
real work. It is just a stepping stone to learning chef-solo and chef-client

This is totally alpha and I would love some feedback!

kallistec · November 18, 2012, 7:14pm

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 at 1:58 AM, Bryan Berry wrote:

Hey Chefs,

I have started training more ppl at $DAYJOB and found that I need a quicker way get new users started with Chef. I usually only have 20-30 minutes maximum to get a user started with Chef. Explaining resources, recipes, cookbooks, roles, environments, etc. easily takes up 1 hour. I needed a way to give my users comfortable w/ the ideas of resources and the concept of a recipe w/ in w/in 20 minutes. The user also needs to do something hands-on w/in that 20 minutes. In the 2nd training session i would introduce chef-solo and cookbooks.

To this end I have created chef-recipe GitHub - bryanwb/chef-recipe: a command-line tool to execute a single chef recipe, which evaluates a single recipe chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel DeLeo (thanks Dan!) It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

You can install chef-recipe as a gem gem install chef-recipe

chef-recipe is meant only as a training tool and not to be used for any real work. It is just a stepping stone to learning chef-solo and chef-client

This is totally alpha and I would love some feedback!
This is most of the way towards what we'd need to merge it into chef proper. Just needs some tests and to take the monkey patching stuff out. Interested in contributing it?

--
Daniel DeLeo

Bryan_Berry · November 18, 2012, 8:04pm

I would be happy to try. Forgive me if I ask dumb questions, working w/
real Ruby libraries is still a new experience for me.

To be honest, the part of this code that I understand the least is the
monkey-patch from your orginal gist

class Chef::Client
attr_reader :events
end

I assume that to get rid of the monkey patch, I would just add attr_reader :events directly to lib/chef/client.rb, correct?

by tests, are you looking for something like this?

github.com

chef/chef/blob/main/spec/unit/application/solo_spec.rb

#
# Author:: AJ Christensen (<aj@junglist.gen.nz>)
# Copyright:: Copyright (c) Chef Software Inc.
# License:: Apache License, Version 2.0
#
# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
# You may obtain a copy of the License at
#
#     http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
#
# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
# limitations under the License.

require "spec_helper"

describe Chef::Application::Solo do

This file has been truncated. show original

tks again for the original gist.

I would also like to merge in my changes from chef-rewind. Keep meaning to
do that

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 8:14 PM, Daniel DeLeo dan@kallistec.com wrote:

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 at 1:58 AM, Bryan Berry wrote:

Hey Chefs,

I have started training more ppl at $DAYJOB and found that I need a
quicker way get new users started with Chef. I usually only have 20-30
minutes maximum to get a user started with Chef. Explaining resources,
recipes, cookbooks, roles, environments, etc. easily takes up 1 hour. I
needed a way to give my users comfortable w/ the ideas of resources and the
concept of a recipe w/ in w/in 20 minutes. The user also needs to do
something hands-on w/in that 20 minutes. In the 2nd training session i
would introduce chef-solo and cookbooks.

To this end I have created chef-recipe
GitHub - bryanwb/chef-recipe: a command-line tool to execute a single chef recipe, which evaluates a single recipe
chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel
DeLeo (thanks Dan!) It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

You can install chef-recipe as a gem gem install chef-recipe

chef-recipe is meant only as a training tool and not to be used for any
real work. It is just a stepping stone to learning chef-solo and chef-client

This is totally alpha and I would love some feedback!

This is most of the way towards what we'd need to merge it into chef
proper. Just needs some tests and to take the monkey patching stuff out.
Interested in contributing it?

--
Daniel DeLeo

Joshua_Timberman · November 18, 2012, 8:06pm

Ohai,

On 11/18/12 2:58 AM, "Bryan Berry" bryan.berry@gmail.com wrote:

To this end I have created chef-recipe
GitHub - bryanwb/chef-recipe: a command-line tool to execute a single chef recipe, which evaluates a single recipe
chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel
DeLeo (thanks Dan!)
It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

As Dan said, this is something we'd like to have in Chef proper. There's a
ticket for adding such a feature here:

http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/CHEF-3571

If you'd like to contribute, please use that ticket. Thanks!

kallistec · November 18, 2012, 8:20pm

On Sunday, November 18, 2012 at 12:04 PM, Bryan Berry wrote:

I would be happy to try. Forgive me if I ask dumb questions, working w/ real Ruby libraries is still a new experience for me.

To be honest, the part of this code that I understand the least is the monkey-patch from your orginal gist

class Chef::Client
attr_reader :events
end

I assume that to get rid of the monkey patch, I would just add attr_reader :events directly to lib/chef/client.rb, correct?
Short answer: yes. Longer answer:

Recall that in ruby, classes are "open" so you can add or overwrite methods/constants at any time. Here you're just adding Client#events (which returns @events) to the class.

Chef::Client#initialize runs EventDispatch::Dispatcher.new(formatter) to create the event dispatcher, and later creates the RunContext with the event dispatcher, but since we need to customize RunContext compared to what Chef::Client normally does, we need to get the event dispatcher out of the client so it can be passed in to RunContext#initialize. This could have been done with instance_variable_get in the original, but I like that even less than monkey patching.

by tests, are you looking for something like this? chef/spec/unit/application/solo_spec.rb at main · chef/chef · GitHub

Ideally we'd have a few levels of tests. Making sure that the command line options effect the desired config changes via unit tests is good. I'd also like to see a functional (in spec/functional) test that runs a simple recipe (single file resource is fine) to ensure that everything is correctly wired up all the way through.

tks again for the original gist.

I would also like to merge in my changes from chef-rewind. Keep meaning to do that

--
Daniel DeLeo

Jon_Stemmle · November 18, 2012, 8:51pm

Just out of if this is not meant to be used in prime-time for "any real
work", what is the "chef" way of handling the cases where you want to run
some scripts you have just one time manually on a set of servers?

Thanks!
Jon
@stemmle

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 1:58 AM, Bryan Berry bryan.berry@gmail.com wrote:

Hey Chefs,

I have started training more ppl at $DAYJOB and found that I need a
quicker way get new users started with Chef. I usually only have 20-30
minutes maximum to get a user started with Chef. Explaining resources,
recipes, cookbooks, roles, environments, etc. easily takes up 1 hour. I
needed a way to give my users comfortable w/ the ideas of resources and the
concept of a recipe w/ in w/in 20 minutes. The user also needs to do
something hands-on w/in that 20 minutes. In the 2nd training session i
would introduce chef-solo and cookbooks.

To this end I have created chef-recipe
GitHub - bryanwb/chef-recipe: a command-line tool to execute a single chef recipe, which evaluates a single recipe
chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel
DeLeo (thanks Dan!) It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

You can install chef-recipe as a gem gem install chef-recipe

chef-recipe is meant only as a training tool and not to be used for any
real work. It is just a stepping stone to learning chef-solo and chef-client

This is totally alpha and I would love some feedback!

coderanger · November 18, 2012, 8:54pm

On Nov 18, 2012, at 12:51 PM, Jon Stemmle wrote:

Just out of if this is not meant to be used in prime-time for "any real work", what is the "chef" way of handling the cases where you want to run some scripts you have just one time manually on a set of servers?

knife ssh would be the built-in way. Personally I use fabric for that though.

--Noah

Bryan_Berry · November 18, 2012, 8:55pm

I have a utility cookbook where I place just such scripts in an individual
recipe

for example, the /usr/localt/tomcat/webapps folder must have permissions
set so that Jenkins can automatically deploy to it.

Some of my applications are 100% managed by Chef but some are not. For
those that aren't i created a recipe

utility::jenkins_pems.rb

If u do write such a script, do your best to make sure it is idempotent.
80% of the time I think a script is a one-off, it ends up not being so

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 9:51 PM, Jon Stemmle jstemmle@topspinmedia.comwrote:

Just out of if this is not meant to be used in prime-time for "any real
work", what is the "chef" way of handling the cases where you want to run
some scripts you have just one time manually on a set of servers?

Thanks!
Jon
@stemmle

On Sun, Nov 18, 2012 at 1:58 AM, Bryan Berry bryan.berry@gmail.comwrote:

Hey Chefs,

I have started training more ppl at $DAYJOB and found that I need a
quicker way get new users started with Chef. I usually only have 20-30
minutes maximum to get a user started with Chef. Explaining resources,
recipes, cookbooks, roles, environments, etc. easily takes up 1 hour. I
needed a way to give my users comfortable w/ the ideas of resources and the
concept of a recipe w/ in w/in 20 minutes. The user also needs to do
something hands-on w/in that 20 minutes. In the 2nd training session i
would introduce chef-solo and cookbooks.

To this end I have created chef-recipe
GitHub - bryanwb/chef-recipe: a command-line tool to execute a single chef recipe, which evaluates a single recipe
chef-recipe RECIPE_FILE . It is largely based on a gist from Daniel
DeLeo (thanks Dan!) It works pretty much the same as puppet-apply.

You can install chef-recipe as a gem gem install chef-recipe

chef-recipe is meant only as a training tool and not to be used for any
real work. It is just a stepping stone to learning chef-solo and chef-client

This is totally alpha and I would love some feedback!

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Execute a single Chef recipe with chef-recipe command

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