launchbox

Bundle cookbooks for use by chef-solo.

Launchbox supports transitive dependency resolution, chef version contraints and exclusions (for those misbehaved cookbooks that depend on more than they should).

Input

launchbox will look for YAML files under the roles and mixins in the input directory (which defaults to ./src).

An example role will look like:

ci:
  include_mixins: [java]
  jenkins:
    http_proxy:
      variant: nginx
  cookbooks:
    java: "1.5.1"
    nginx: "0.101.1"
    jenkins: "0.6.3"
  run_list:
    - java
    - jenkins

Think of mixins as partial roles for reusability. At run-time launchbox will apply all mixins in order and then override any values with the data in the role itself.

Cookbooks

The cookbooks specified for a role will be downloaded from the specified web server or S3 bucket.

S3

To use an S3 remote use launchbox --bucket your.bucket.name

In the case of an S3 remote launchbox will look for the following keys when downloading cookbooks:

contents: cookbooks/<cookbook>/<version>/<cookbook>.tar.gz
metadata: cookbooks/<cookbook>/<version>/<cookbook>.json

For determining the available versions launchbox will list the bucket and find all available versions.

HTTP

To use an HTTP(S) remote use lauchbox --url http://your/bucket/server

In the case of an HTTP(s) remote launchbox will use the following URLs:

contents: <URL>/<cookbook>/<version>/<cookbook>.tar.gz
metadata: <URL>/<cookbook>/<version>/<cookbook>.json
versions: <URL>/<cookbook>/versions.json

Output

After running launchbox the target folder will contain a JSON file with the role metadata and tar.gz containing all the necessary cookbooks for that role. It will also output the SHA-256 of these two files.

You can supply these two files directly to chef-solo using -j <path/to/role.json> and -r </path/to/role.tar.gz>

Usage

For detailed usage information please run launchbox -h