Packaging Cookbook Dependencies Locally

On the local computer, create a cookbook by running the chef command line tool.

chef generate cookbook "server-app"

This command creates a cookbook, a Berksfile, a metadata.rb file, and a recipe directory, and places them in a folder that has the same name as the cookbook. The following example shows the structure of what is created.

server-app <-- the cookbook you've just created
    └── Berksfile
    ├── metadata.rb
    └── recipes

In a text editor, edit the Berksfile to point to cookbooks on which the server-app cookbook will depend. In our example, we want server-app to depend on the java cookbook from the Chef Supermarket. We are specifying the version 1.50.0 or newer minor version, but you can enter any published version in the single quotation marks. Save your changes and close the file.

source 'https://supermarket.chef.io'
cookbook 'java', '~> 1.50.0'

Edit the metadata.rb file to add the dependency. Save your changes and close the file.

depends 'java' , '~> 1.50.0'

Change to the server-app cookbook directory that Chef created for you, and then run the package command to create a tar file of the cookbook. If you are packaging multiple cookbooks, you want to run this command at the root directory in which all cookbooks are stored. To package a single cookbook, run this command at the cookbook directory level. In this example, we run this command in the server-app directory.

berks package cookbooks.tar.gz

The output resembles the following. The tar.gz file is created in your local directory.

Cookbook(s) packaged to /Users/username/tmp/berks/cookbooks.tar.gz

In the AWS CLI, upload the package you just created to Amazon S3. Make a note of the new URL of the cookbook package after you have uploaded it to S3; you'll need this URL for your stack settings.

aws s3 cp cookbooks.tar.gz s3://bucket-name/

The output resembles the following.

upload: ./cookbooks.tar.gz to s3://bucket-name/cookbooks.tar.gz

In AWS OpsWorks Stacks, modify your stack to use the package that you uploaded as the cookbook source.

1. Set the Use custom Chef cookbooks setting to Yes.

2. Set Repository type to S3 Archive.

3. In Repository URL, paste the URL of the cookbook package that you uploaded in step 5.

Save your stack changes.

On the local computer, create a cookbook by using the chef command line tool:

chef generate cookbook "server-app"

This command creates a cookbook and a Berksfile, and places them in a folder that has the same name as the cookbook.

Change to the cookbook directory that Chef created for you, and then package everything by running the following command:

berks package cookbooks.tar.gz

The output looks like this:

Cookbook(s) packaged to /Users/username/tmp/berks/cookbooks.tar.gz

In the AWS CLI, upload the package you just created to Amazon S3:

aws s3 cp cookbooks.tar.gz s3://bucket-name/

The output looks like this:

upload: ./cookbooks.tar.gz to s3://bucket-name/cookbooks.tar.gz

In AWS OpsWorks Stacks, modify your stack to use the package that you uploaded as the cookbook source.

On the local computer, run the following chef commands to generate two cookbooks:

chef generate cookbook "server-app"
chef generate cookbook "server-utils"

In this example, the server-app cookbook performs Java configurations, so we need to add a dependency on Java.

Edit server-app/metadata.rb to add a dependency on the community Java cookbook:

maintainer "The Authors"
maintainer_email "you@example.com"
license "all_rights"
description "Installs/Configures server-app"
long_description "Installs/Configures server-app"
version "0.1.0"
depends "java"

Tell Berkshelf what to package by editing the Berksfile file in the cookbook root directory as follows:

source "https://supermarket.chef.io"
cookbook "server-app", path: "./server-app"
cookbook "server-utils", path: "./server-utils"

Your file structure now looks like this:

 .. 
    └── Berksfile
    ├── server-app
    └── server-utils

Finally, create a zip package, upload it to Amazon S3, and modify your AWS OpsWorks Stacks stack to use the new cookbook source. To do this, follow steps 2 through 4 in Packaging Dependencies Locally for One Cookbook.