Ohai chefs,
Recently we have been getting some questions about the versions of Chef Client and Chef Development Kit. I wanted to share some information about the background and the upcoming releases to shed some light into this topic.
## Chef Development Kit and Chef Client
We would like to ensure that you have the latest stable version of Chef Client tools (chef-client, knife, chef-apply, etc…) when interacting with your infrastructure. In order to achieve this, Chef Development Kit packages contain two versions of `chef` gem. The included versions, as of version `0.3.5`, are:
* `11.18.0.rc.1`: This version is used when you run the commands provided by Chef Client, for e.g. chef-client, knife, chef-apply, etc…
* `12.0.0.alpha.2`: This version is used as a library by other tools in the package, e.g. when you run `chef`, the new command that Chef Development Kit provides.
`appbundler` is the tool that enables this functionality. You can read more about it here.
In the light of this information, here are the upcoming releases we are planning of Chef Development Kit to catch up with Chef Client 12:
### Chef Development Kit 0.3.6 with Chef Client 11.18.0
In order to fix the last few standing issues around Chef Client 11 and provide a final stable release to users who will not be able to move to Chef Client 12 immediately; our plan is to release `0.3.6` version of Chef Development Kit with `11.18.0` version of Chef Client.
This release will be the final stable release of Chef Development Kit that includes Chef Client 11. It will still contain two `chef` gems. The tools that are provided by Chef Client will be versioned 11.18.0.
### Chef Development Kit 0.4.0 with Chef Client 12
The next step will be releasing version `0.4.0` of Chef Development Kit with Chef Client 12. We will include the last stable version of Chef Client 12 in this release.
This version will include a single version of `chef` gem. But don’t be surprised to see two different versions of `chef` gem inside Chef Development Kit as we move forward. We occasionally need to use the latest `chef` gem for `chef` command. Remember that `appbundler` will make sure that you are always getting the latest stable version of Chef Client tools when using Chef Development Kit.
## Chef Client 12.0.X
In parallel, we are continuously on the lookout for issues that are making migrations from Chef Client 11 to Chef Client 12 harder. We will be doing more patch releases to Chef Client 12 until all the migration issues are fixed. 12.0.2 will be available soon.
Hope this provides a little bit of clarity around the versions of Chef Client and Chef Development Kit. Please reach out to us on chef and chef-dev mailing lists if you have any questions.
