Chef - Attributes

guidelines for attributes

• cookbooks must not require attributes to be set outside of the cookbook itself to function

  1. http://bytearrays.com/chef-cookbook-patterns/

• override community cookbook attributes in wrapper cookbooks using override

  • http://bytearrays.com/chef-cookbook-patterns/

• don’t store attributes in roles at all

  1. http://dougireton.com/blog/2013/02/16/chef-cookbook-anti-patterns/
  2. http://bytearrays.com/chef-cookbook-patterns/

• store environment-specific attributes in environment files

• don’t store attributes in recipes - keep them in attribute files: to initialize attributes in environment cookbooks or override attributes in wrapper cookbooks

  1. http://deadunicornz.org/blog/2014/06/11/chef-attribute-overrides-in-recipes-is-a-bad-idea
  2. http://agiletesting.blogspot.ru/2010/11/working-with-chef-attributes.html

• use only default and override attributes in cookbooks and recipes

  1. https://docs.chef.io/ruby.html

• don’t use local variables inside attribute files - they are eagerly evaluated and some node attributes might be not available yet

• prefer strings to symbols as attribute names, in any case don’t mix different notations

  1. https://docs.chef.io/ruby.html