Customizing Chef

Chapter 12. Contributing Your Customizations

Thus far in our journey through customizing Chef, we have focused on the different types of customization supported and how to create and use them. In this chapter, we’re going to jump forward a little to the point when you have created the customizations you need to make Chef work for your business requirements, and are perhaps starting to think about sharing your customizations with the wider Chef community—this is, after all, one of the main strengths of the Chef community, and I’ve referred to a number of community-created customizations in various chapters of this book. We’ll learn about:

• Being a good open source citizen
• Following open source best practices
• Packaging and releasing Chef-specific customizations

So, you’ve worked through the material in this book to learn how to create Chef customizations, and you’ve used the Criteria for Customization to craft the customized plugins, handlers, formatters, or recipes to make Chef fit the requirements of your business. If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably also benefited from the Chef community along the way—advice, guidance, or maybe even code—and finally you’re done. Your customizations are complete, your coworkers are much happier with your Chef setup and infrastructure code, and your Chef pain points have been eliminated.

It’s at this point that you may well consider open sourcing your customizations, so that others can benefit and avoid having to replicate the work you did ...