cookbooks.md

+++ title = "About Cookbooks" draft = false

gh_repo = "chef-web-docs"

aliases = ["/cookbooks.html", "/essentials_cookbooks.html"] product = ["client", "server", "workstation"]

[menu] [menu.infra] title = "About Cookbooks" identifier = "chef_infra/cookbook_reference/cookbooks.md About Cookbooks" parent = "chef_infra/cookbook_reference" weight = 10 +++

{{< readfile file="content/reusable/md/cookbooks_summary.md" >}}

{{< readfile file="content/reusable/md/infra_lang_ruby.md" >}}

{{< readfile file="content/reusable/md/infra_lang_summary.md" >}}

Chef Infra Client runs a recipe only when instructed. When Chef Infra Client runs the same recipe more than once, the results will be the same system state each time. When a recipe is run against a system, but nothing has changed on either the system or in the recipe, Chef Infra Client won't change anything.

Components

A cookbook is comprised of recipes and other optional components as files or directories.

Component	File/Directory Name	Description
Recipes	recipes/	{{< readfile file="content/reusable/md/cookbooks_recipe.md" >}}
Attributes	attributes/	{{< readfile file="content/reusable/md/cookbooks_attribute.md" >}}
Files	files/	A file distribution is a specific type of resource that tells a cookbook how to distribute files, including by node, by platform, or by file version.
Libraries	libraries/	A library allows the use of arbitrary Ruby code in a cookbook, either as a way to extend the Chef Infra Client language or to implement a new class.
Custom Resources	resources/	A custom resource is an abstract approach for defining a set of actions and (for each action) a set of properties and validation parameters.
Templates	templates/	A template is a file written in markup language that uses Ruby statements to solve complex configuration scenarios.
Ohai Plugins	ohai/	Custom Ohai plugins can be written to load additional information about your nodes to be used in recipes. This requires Chef Infra Server 12.18.14 or later.
Metadata	metadata.rb	This file contains information about the cookbook such as the cookbook name, description, and version.

Community Cookbooks

Chef maintains a large collection of cookbooks. In addition, there are thousands of cookbooks created and maintained by the community:

Components	Description
Cookbooks Maintained by Chef	Chef maintains a collection of cookbooks that are widely used by the community.
Cookbooks Maintained by Sous Chefs	Sous Chefs is a community organization that collaborates to maintain many of the most used Chef cookbooks.
Cookbooks Maintained by the Community	The community has authored thousands of cookbooks, ranging from niche cookbooks that are used by only a few organizations to popular cookbooks used by almost everyone.

Generate a Cookbook

Use the chef generate cookbook subcommand to generate a cookbook.

A cookbook generated withchef generate cookbook custom_web creates a cookbook named custom_web with the directory structure:

. cookbooks
└── custom_web
    ├── CHANGELOG.md
    ├── LICENSE
    ├── Policyfile.rb
    ├── README.md
    ├── chefignore
    ├── compliance
    │   ├── README.md
    │   ├── inputs
    │   ├── profiles
    │   └── waivers
    ├── kitchen.yml
    ├── metadata.rb
    ├── recipes
    │   └── default.rb
    └── test
        └── integration
            └── default
                └── default_test.rb