The issue I have is that there are cookbooks that exist on github with the same name as a cookbook on the chef cookbook site (monit is the cookbook). I am write a cookbook and want to use the github version, however berkshelf pulls the version from the chef site when I include the metadata keyword in my Berksfile. I tried to override this in the Berksfile. here is the content of mt berksfile:
site :opscode
cookbook "monit" , git: "https://github.com/phlipper/chef-monit.git"
metadata
This is a known issue in Berkshelf.
Refs: