We’re pleased to release a new, easy way to install the Chef client: using our Omnibus packaging. Omnibus is all about helping you spend spending less time installing Chef and more time building awesome, automated infrastructure.
The Omnibus installer includes the Chef client, a stable version of Ruby, and everything else needed for Chef to run, in a single package. The dependencies are all carefully embedded so they won’t conflict with other versions of the same software on your system.
To get started, head over to http://www.opscode.com/chef/install/ and select the platform you would like to install Chef on. You’ll find simple instructions there for downloading and running the installer on a number of platforms, listed below.
| Ubuntu Linux Debian Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux Fedora Linux CentOS Linux |
Oracle Linux Scientific Linux OS X Microsoft Windows |
Because Omnibus includes its own version of Rubygems, it is important that you correctly use the gem_package and chef_gem resources. The gem_package resource is for installing a gem package to your system, whereas the chef_gem resource is for install a gem for use inside a chef recipe. Additional information is available on the resources wiki page.
The new installers are built using the same Ruby based Open Source project we use for packaging Private Chef. A couple of the installers are built with older build systems, and will we plan to migrate them in the coming months. We expect to add more platforms will be added in the future and we have been working on packaging for the Open Source Chef server as well.
Omnibus wraps itself in a package specific to your distribution where possible, such as a deb or rpm, so you can easily manage it using the tools you’re familiar with. If you prefer regular packages or installing from Rubygems for policy or personal reasons, fear not, the existing packaging will continue to be used as well.
Let us know what you think!
