The Chef Survival Guide
$9.99
Minimum price
$14.99
Suggested price

The Chef Survival Guide

An Opinionated Approach to Test Driven Chef Development

About the Book

Note: I'm not really maintaining this book anymore, I think some of the information may still be relevant, but much could be outdated. If you find value, that's great, if not I won't feel bad if you "kindly" return. If you are interested in contributing, contact me and we can work something out. Thanks!

Chef is a great way to manage your infrastructure in an automated way. It's relatively new and has amazing community support. With any new technology there will be lots of competing documentation, best practices, tools and opinions. This book catalogs the process I used to develop the Chef Broiler Plate repository which integrates some of the most popular tools that exist right now to aid in Chef cookbook development.

You will learn, as I did, how to build from the ground up a framework for building cookbooks that adhere to high standards of code quality and test driven development.

This book is under active development, I'm in the process of fleshing out each section and adding more examples.

Topics include:

  • Project Setup
  • Build System
  • Continuous Integration
  • Knife Usage
  • Universal Configuration for Team Development
  • TDD with Chefspec and Minitest
  • Cookbook Code Quality
  • Workflow
  • Dependency Management

Praise for The Chef Survival Guide

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.

Trustfundbaby, Hacker News

About the Author

Jason Fox
Jason Fox

Jason Fox is an independent software consultant, designer, photographer and motorcycle enthusiast who is devoted to applying the timeless principles of craftsmanship to software projects. Both his blog and company information can be found at Never Stop Building.

Table of Contents

  • Introduction
    • The Spirit
    • The Menu
  • 1 DevOps: You’re Now a Developer
    • Infrastructure as Code
    • Code Requires Testing
    • Test First
  • 2 Basic Requirements
    • Installing Virtual Box
    • Setting up the Knife CLI Tool
    • Creating a Chef Server Account
    • Installing your Security Keys
    • Where are we?
  • 3 Project Creation
    • Create a new Project
    • Using Git Flow
    • Readme Driven Development
  • 4 Build System with Rake
    • Set Ruby Version
    • Create a Gemfile
    • Install the Dependencies
    • Create Rakefile
  • 5 Continuous Integration with Travis
    • Configuring Travis
    • Update your Gemfile
    • Update your README.md
  • 6 Knife Configuration
    • Creating your Knife Configuration
    • Determining your Variable Dependencies
    • Verify your Keys
    • Setup your Knife Configurations
  • 7 Vagrant Configuration
    • Creating a Vagrant Configuration
    • Set up the Project Location
    • Launching the Virtual Box
  • 8 Outside in TDD with Chefspec
    • Update your Gemfile
    • Automate Chefspec Cookbook Creation
    • Create Your Sample Cookbook (WOO!)
    • Create a Failing Spec
    • Make your Spec Pass
  • 9 Code Quality with Foodcritic
    • Add the Foodcritic Gem
    • Creating a Rake Task
    • Follow the Rules!
  • 10 Cookbook Testing with Knife
    • Prepare a Knife CI Configuration
    • Adding the Rake Task
    • Update the Build Task
    • Update the CI Configuration
  • 11 Workflow Management with Spork
    • Update your Gemfile
    • Configure your Spork
    • Making an Example Change
    • Make the Tests Pass
    • Upload the Updated Cookbook
  • 12 Dependency Management with Berkshelf
    • Update your Gemfile
    • Configure your Cookbook Dependencies
    • Install the Community Cookbooks
    • Update the Vagrant File Run List
  • 13 Infrastructure Verification with MiniTest
    • Put your Files Somewhere!
    • Building the Test
    • Deploying the Cookbook and Testing
  • 14 Conclusion

The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee

Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.

Now, this is technically risky for us, since you'll have the book or course files either way. But we're so confident in our products and services, and in our authors and readers, that we're happy to offer a full money back guarantee for everything we sell.

You can only find out how good something is by trying it, and because of our 100% money back guarantee there's literally no risk to do so!

So, there's no reason not to click the Add to Cart button, is there?

See full terms...

Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase

We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.

(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)

In fact, authors have earnedover $13 millionwriting, publishing and selling on Leanpub.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub

Free Updates. DRM Free.

If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).

Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.

Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.

Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them

Write and Publish on Leanpub

You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!

Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.

Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.

Learn more about writing on Leanpub