Windows Cookbook 3.0 released

Chef Release Announcements
1

Today we shipped version 3.0 of the Windows cookbook with some huge new changes that you should be aware of if you run Windows. Here’s what’s new / changed:

Breaking changes

  • This cookbook now requires Chef 12.6 or later and we highly recommend even more recent Chef 12 releases as they resolve critical Windows bugs and include new Windows specific functionality.

  • The windows_package resource has been removed as it is built into chef-client 12.6+ and the built in version is faster / more robust.

  • The powershell out helper has been removed as it is now included in chef-client 12.6+

  • The default recipe no longer installs the various Windows rubygems required for non-omnibus chef-client installs. This was a leftover from Chef 10 and is no longer necessary, or desired, as we ship these gems in every Windows chef release.

  • windows_feature has been heavily refactored and in doing so the method used to control the underlying providers has changed. You can no longer specify which windows_feature provider to use by setting node['windows']['feature_provider'] or by setting the provider property on the resource itself. Instead you must set install_method to specify the correct underlying installation method. You can also now reference the resources directly by using windows_feature_servermanagercmd, windows_feature_powershell or windows_feature_dism instead of windows_feature

  • Windows_font’s file property has been renamed to name to avoid collisions with the Chef file resource.

Other Changes

  • All LWRPs in this cookbook have been refactored to be custom resources
  • windows_path, windows_shortcut, and windows_zipfile have been updated to be idempotent with support for why-run mode and proper notification when the resources actually update
  • windows_pagefile now validates the name of the pagefile to avoid cryptic error messages
  • A new share resource has been added for setting up Windows shares
  • TrustedPeople certificate store has been added to the list of allowed store_names in the certificate resources
  • version helper constant definitions has been improved
  • A new all property has been added to the Windows feature resource to install all dependent features. See the windows feature test recipe for usage examples.
  • Windows feature now accepts an array of features, which greatly speeds up feature installs and simplifies recipe code
  • The path resource now accepts paths with either forward slashes or backslashes and correctly adds the path using Windows style backslash.
  • The powershell provider for windows_feature resource has been fixed to properly import ServerManager in the :remove action
  • Testing has been switched from a Rakefile to the new Delivery local mode
  • Several issues with testing the resources on non-Windows hosts in ChefSpec have been resolved
  • A new source property has been added to the windows_feature_powershell resource
  • Additional test suites have been added to Test Kitchen to cover all resources and those test suites are now being executed in AppVeyer on every PR
  • Travis CI testing has been removed and all testing is being performed in AppVeyer

-Tim

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