[SOLVED] Using multiple recipes in same cookbook

Using multiple recipes in same cookbook

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?

Solution

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.