WIP project

This project is under active development and not yet usable.

What is Zef?

Zef is a framework for an opinionated Chef / Knife Zero usage. TL;DR:

• Use YAML instead of JSON
• Describe nodes in YAML as well
• Use ssh-then-run-against-chef-zero approach (using Knife Zero) instead of having centralized node
• Do not rely on stored attributes, perform every run as first

Installation

gem install zef

Directory structure

nodes
cookbooks
data-bags # or dataBags, or data_bags
environments # or just envs
roles
zef.yml

zef.yml

Configuration file determines repository root. Currently, all configuration options are optional, so you can just put an empty file in repository root.

schema: v1
paths:
  repository: repository
  cookbooks: [cookbooks]
  nodes: [nodes]
  dataBags: [data-bags, data_bags, dataBags]
  roles: [roles]
  environments: [environments, envs]

.yml

Describes single node. Provided settings are merged into attributes before convergence. Hostname is not used (but you can pick it up in your recipe as node['zef']['node']['hostname']), address used for node connection.

schema: v1
hostname: <fqdn:string, optional, default: id>
address: <ip address:string, optional, default: id>
runList: [<string>]

Commands

build

Alias for build repository

build repository

Builds entire Chef repository, rendering YAML files and installing dependencies:

zef build repository
zef build repository <target-directory>
zef build repository <source-directory> <target-directory>

Any found cookbooks are built in process as well.

build cookbook

Builds cookbook from source, rendering YAML attributes/metadata into .rb files:

zef build cookbook
zef build cookbook <target-directory>
zef build cookbook <source-directory> <target-directory>

If source or target directory is not set, it is presumed to be current directory, meaning that cookbook may be built in-place.

converge

Converges node with specified id. Performs repository build unless explicitly skipped.

zef converge <node id> [--skip-build]