Add chef-client option that disables convergence to prevent the running of cookbooks

Steven Dossett added a comment - 17/Feb/11 2:57 PM The following patches chef-client to add "-C, --no-convergence Disable convergence to prevent the running of cookbooks" It's available here http://github.com/sdossett/chef/tree/001 --- chef/lib/chef/application/client.rb +++ chef/lib/chef/application/client.rb @@ -138,6 +138,12 @@ class Chef::Application::Client < Chef::Application :proc => lambda {|v| puts "Chef: #{::Chef::VERSION}"}, :exit => 0 + option :no_convergence, + :short => "-C", + :long => "--no-convergence", + :description => "Disable convergence to prevent the running of cookbooks", + :proc => lambda { |p| true } + def initialize super --- chef/lib/chef/client.rb +++ chef/lib/chef/client.rb @@ -151,7 +151,11 @@ class Chef run_started run_context = setup_run_context - converge(run_context) + if Chef::Config[:no_convergence] + Chef::Log.info("Skipping Convergence") + else + converge(run_context) + end save_updated_node run_status.stop_clock --- chef/lib/chef/config.rb +++ chef/lib/chef/config.rb @@ -163,6 +163,7 @@ class Chef run_command_stdout_timeout 120 solo false splay nil + no_convergence false # Set these to enable SSL authentication / mutual-authentication # with the server

Daniel DeLeo added a comment - 29/Jun/11 3:38 PM Hi Steven, While we understand your use for this feature, this isn't the way we'd like to support this use case. First of all, your cookbooks should always be written such that no operation is taken on a correctly configured system. If your cookbooks meet this requirement, then you only need to ensure that new cookbooks are not introduced to hosts when you're not ready for them. This is what the environments feature is designed to do. Additionally, we plan in the future to introduce a feature that will allow you to run only parts of a node's run list at a time--so you could, for example, continuously converge the base system configuration, but run deployment only on demand. We believe these current and planned features will completely address your use case without compromising on Chef's core design philosophy or creating a possibility for "anti-pattern" use patterns. Feel free to start a discussion on the chef-dev mailing list if you wish to discuss this further. Thanks, Dan