RELEASE_NOTES.md

This file holds "in progress" release notes for the current release under development and is intended for consumption by the Chef Documentation team. Please see https://docs.chef.io/release_notes.html for the official Chef release notes.

Chef Client Release Notes 12.16:

Highlighted enhancements for this release:

attribute_changed event hook

In a cookbook library file, you can add this in order to print out all attribute changes in cookbooks:

Chef.event_handler do
  on :attribute_changed do |precedence, key, value|
    puts "setting attribute #{precedence}#{key.map {|n| "[\"#{n}\"]" }.join} = #{value}"
  end
end

If you want to setup a policy that override attributes should never be used:

Chef.event_handler do
  on :attribute_changed do |precedence, key, value|
    raise "override policy violation" if precedence == :override
  end
end

There will likely be some missed attribute changes and some bugs that need fixing (hint: PRs accepted), there could be added command line options to print out all attribute changes or filter them (hint: PRs accepted), or to add source file and line numbers to the event (hint: PRs accepted).

Automatic connection to Chef Automate's Data Collector with supported Chef Server

Chef Client will automatically attempt to connect to the Chef Server authenticated data collector proxy. If you have a supported version of Chef Server and have enabled this feature on the Chef Server, Chef Client run data will automatically be forwarded to Automate without additional Chef Client configuration. If you do not have Automate or the feature is disabled on the Chef Server, Chef Client will detect this and disable data collection.

Note that Chef Server 12.11.0+ (not yet released as of the time this was written) is required for this feature.

RFC018 Partially Implemented: Specify --field-separator for attribute filtering

If you have periods (.) in your Chef Node attribute keys, you can now pass the --field-separator (or -S) flag along with your --attribute (or -a) flag to specify a custom nesting character other than ..

In a situation where the webapp node has the following node data:

{
  "foo.bar": "baz",
  "alpha": {
    "beta": "omega"
  }
}

Running knife node show with the default field separator (.) won't show us the data we're expecting for some attributes:

$ knife node show webapp -a foo.bar
webapp:
  foo.bar:

$ knife node show webapp -a alpha.beta
webapp:
  alpha.beta: omega

However, by specifying a field separator other than . we're now able to show the data.

$ knife node show webapp -S: -a foo.bar
webapp:
  foo.bar: baz

$ knife node show webapp -S: -a alpha:beta
webapp:
  alpha:beta: omega

Package locking for Apt, Yum, and Zypper

To allow for more fine grained control of package installation the apt_package, yum_package, and zypper_package resources now support the :lock and :unlock actions.

package "httpd" do
  action :lock
end

package "httpd" do
  action :unlock
end

Highlighted bug fixes for this release: