Using multiple recipes in same cookbook

Question

I have a chef cookbook with four recipes. Each recipe configures a web application:

myCookbook
   |
   |_ _ recipes
       |_ _ default.rb
       |_ _ app1.rb
       |_ _ app2.rb
       |_ _ app3.rb
       |_ _ app4.rb

I've configured this cookbook to update apps based on a default.rb recipe that just iterates over the other web app recipes and runs them. The cookbook is kicked off by updated web app version in a data bag.

Because I put all the apps into one cookbook, if I want to update one app then I have to update them all. I can manually override the runlist to just deploy one app, but is there a way to "knife diff" the data bag in the default recipe (or something like that) to only run the corresponding recipe of the web app version that was updated?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 22 '17 at 00:13

2

You would have to implement the diff yourself using a local copy for idempotence tracking. Overall I would recommend reworking your recipes to be idempotent and convergent themselves.

answered Feb 22 '17 at 00:13

coderanger

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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 22 '17 at 11:08

You should write self convergent recipes instead of this.

If the main reason behind using an external recipe (The default one) here is to avoid writing the same code over and over all recipes (The code that updates the app), you should try writing then a library or a custom resource that will be available for all your app recipes to use.

Online chef documentation has enough information about doing this, also it is quite easy if you have basic Ruby knowledge.

Using multiple recipes in same cookbook

2 Answers2