4 ms·

The Chef Survival Guide Book

43 points by jrobertfox 13y ago

jetblackio 13y ago
Finally a book on Chef. I just purchased it and will be reading it over the next few weeks. Still waiting for one from Oreilly. EDIT: Bah, maybe I'm not familiar with Learnpub, or maybe I didn't read the fine print, but this book is under active development and is currently only 42 pages long and is pretty skimpy. Oh well. Hopefully it iterates quickly.
- bratsche 13y ago
  They really need a place where you can enter your email address and be contacted when the book is finished.
- jrobertfox 13y ago
  Yeah I plan on doing a batch of updates this week and flesh out more of the content next week. Let me know what topics are of most interest to you and I'll prioritize those. Thanks!
  - jetblackio 13y ago
    Thanks for the response. While I haven't read the book yet and only briefly looked through it, I think the most important areas to cover are 'development process/workflow' and 'testing'. Opscode does a pretty good job of explaining how to actually write cookbooks and things like LWRPs, but the two areas I mentioned are rather fragmented on the web. I've also heard about the idea of 'Library Cookbooks', and the idea of having a generic cookbook that you can include in an organization-specific cookbook seems very intriguing. If you are familiar with this concept, including it the book would be quite worthwhile. Another area I would be very interested in is Chef Best Practices. I've gotten myself into quite a bit of trouble by putting way too much information in my roles, only to run into all sorts of trouble with versioning when working in multiple environments i.e, 'dev', 'test', 'prod'. Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort to get a book out. Chef is a little starved in the way of accessible information (I shouldn't have to resort to IIRC multiple times per day to get questions answered). This is badly needed.
    - jrobertfox 13y ago
      Thanks for this, you have the same concerns as I that prompted the book, which started out as the development of the "Chef Broiler Plate" https://github.com/jrobertfox/chef-broiler-plate https://github.com/jrobertfox/chef-broiler-plate because there were all these great tools, but no cohesive idea on how to integrate all of them. I think i'll add a section that goes over the process as you say, because once the framework is set up you could -create cookbook -build tests -write book -verify quality -test on vagrant -version/promote something like that.
      - jetblackio 13y ago
        Sounds like we are on the same page exactly. That process sounds good. And if you are able to clearly lay out how all the various tools integrate in to a cohesive whole, you'll have solved a very big problem in the Chef community.
philipDS 13y ago
Slightly off-topic, but what exactly is the difference between Puppet and Chef? How do they differ?
- jrobertfox 13y ago
  This graphic is pretty informative on the subject: https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/puppet-vs-chef-infographic/ https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/puppet-vs-chef-infographic/ They are both quite similar in their goals, I have used both, but found Chef to be more user friendly and with a more vibrant community.
- druiid 13y ago
  I would say the biggest difference between Puppet and Chef comes down to Chef is basically 'pure' Ruby while Puppet has a DSL derived from Ruby, which is meant to be easy to work with. I personally prefer Puppet because there's generally one way to do things, while it also allows you to extend the resources and functions available by falling back to custom written Ruby libraries. The Puppet 'code' looks pretty basic and is all generally derived from the core resource types defined here: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/latest/type.html http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/latest/type.html You will also see some examples of what defined resources might look like there.
trustfundbaby 13y ago
I've been struggling with Chef for a few months now and it has repeatedly blown my mind how, for something as popular as it appears to be, there is simply no good reading material for it. This is timely and a really big deal. Good speed.
- jrobertfox 13y ago
  Thanks so much! Can I quote you on that for the landing page?
  - trustfundbaby 13y ago
    absolutely!
fishbacon 13y ago
At a glance I thought this was a book on cooking for developers, this idea pleased me. I think when I finally finish being lazy I might write a book about cooking meant for developers. A book on Chef is also cool.
oski 13y ago
Awesome. This looks great and I just purchased a copy. However, many of the chapters are listed as "under development." When can we expect them to be finalized and released?
- jrobertfox 13y ago
  I'll be updating the content of each chapter and the book as a whole (the plan is) on a weekly basis.

43 points by jrobertfox 13y ago

Finally a book on Chef. I just purchased it and will be reading it over the next few weeks. Still waiting for one from Oreilly. EDIT: Bah, maybe I'm not familiar with Learnpub, or maybe I didn't read the fine print, but this book is under active development and is currently only 42 pages long and is pretty skimpy. Oh well. Hopefully it iterates quickly.

bratsche 13y ago
They really need a place where you can enter your email address and be contacted when the book is finished.
jrobertfox 13y ago
Yeah I plan on doing a batch of updates this week and flesh out more of the content next week. Let me know what topics are of most interest to you and I'll prioritize those. Thanks!
- jetblackio 13y ago
  Thanks for the response. While I haven't read the book yet and only briefly looked through it, I think the most important areas to cover are 'development process/workflow' and 'testing'. Opscode does a pretty good job of explaining how to actually write cookbooks and things like LWRPs, but the two areas I mentioned are rather fragmented on the web. I've also heard about the idea of 'Library Cookbooks', and the idea of having a generic cookbook that you can include in an organization-specific cookbook seems very intriguing. If you are familiar with this concept, including it the book would be quite worthwhile. Another area I would be very interested in is Chef Best Practices. I've gotten myself into quite a bit of trouble by putting way too much information in my roles, only to run into all sorts of trouble with versioning when working in multiple environments i.e, 'dev', 'test', 'prod'. Anyway, thanks for putting in the effort to get a book out. Chef is a little starved in the way of accessible information (I shouldn't have to resort to IIRC multiple times per day to get questions answered). This is badly needed.
  - jrobertfox 13y ago
    Thanks for this, you have the same concerns as I that prompted the book, which started out as the development of the "Chef Broiler Plate" https://github.com/jrobertfox/chef-broiler-plate https://github.com/jrobertfox/chef-broiler-plate because there were all these great tools, but no cohesive idea on how to integrate all of them. I think i'll add a section that goes over the process as you say, because once the framework is set up you could -create cookbook -build tests -write book -verify quality -test on vagrant -version/promote something like that.
    - jetblackio 13y ago
      Sounds like we are on the same page exactly. That process sounds good. And if you are able to clearly lay out how all the various tools integrate in to a cohesive whole, you'll have solved a very big problem in the Chef community.

philipDS 13y ago

Slightly off-topic, but what exactly is the difference between Puppet and Chef? How do they differ?

jrobertfox 13y ago
This graphic is pretty informative on the subject: https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/puppet-vs-chef-infographic/ https://www.scriptrock.com/blog/puppet-vs-chef-infographic/ They are both quite similar in their goals, I have used both, but found Chef to be more user friendly and with a more vibrant community.
druiid 13y ago
I would say the biggest difference between Puppet and Chef comes down to Chef is basically 'pure' Ruby while Puppet has a DSL derived from Ruby, which is meant to be easy to work with. I personally prefer Puppet because there's generally one way to do things, while it also allows you to extend the resources and functions available by falling back to custom written Ruby libraries. The Puppet 'code' looks pretty basic and is all generally derived from the core resource types defined here: http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/latest/type.html http://docs.puppetlabs.com/references/latest/type.html You will also see some examples of what defined resources might look like there.

trustfundbaby 13y ago

I've been struggling with Chef for a few months now and it has repeatedly blown my mind how, for something as popular as it appears to be, there is simply no good reading material for it. This is timely and a really big deal. Good speed.

jrobertfox 13y ago
Thanks so much! Can I quote you on that for the landing page?
- trustfundbaby 13y ago
  absolutely!

fishbacon 13y ago

At a glance I thought this was a book on cooking for developers, this idea pleased me. I think when I finally finish being lazy I might write a book about cooking meant for developers. A book on Chef is also cool.

oski 13y ago

Awesome. This looks great and I just purchased a copy. However, many of the chapters are listed as "under development." When can we expect them to be finalized and released?

jrobertfox 13y ago
I'll be updating the content of each chapter and the book as a whole (the plan is) on a weekly basis.