Make sure you have a cookbook named my_cookbook and the run_list of your node includes my_cookbook, as described in the Creating and using cookbooks recipe.

Berkshelf helps you to keep those utility cookbooks out of your Chef repository. This makes it much easier to maintain the cookbooks, which really matter.

Let's see how to write a cookbook by running a bunch of utility recipes and manage the required cookbooks with Berkshelf:

Berkshelf comes with the Chef DK.

We create our cookbook and tell it to use a few basic cookbooks.

Instead of making us manually install all the cookbooks using knife cookbook site install, chef generate creates a Berksfile, besides the metadata.rb file.

The Berksfile is pretty simple. It tells Berkshelf to use the Chef supermarket as the default source for all cookbooks:

source "https://supermarket.chef.io"

It tells Berkshelf to read the metadata.rb file to find all the required cookbooks. This is the simplest way when working inside a single cookbook. Please see the following There's more… section to find an example of a more advanced usage of the Berksfile.

After telling Berkshelf where to find all the required cookbook names, we use it to install all those cookbooks:

berks install

Berkshelf stores cookbooks in ~/.berkshelf/cookbooks, by default. This keeps your Chef repository clutter-free. Instead of having to manage all the required cookbooks inside your own Chef repository, Berkshelf takes care of them. You simply need to check in Berksfile with your recipe, and everyone using your recipe can download all the required cookbooks by using Berkshelf.

To make sure that there's no mix-up with different cookbook versions when sharing your cookbook, Berkshelf creates a file called Berksfile.lock alongside Berksfile. Here, you'll find the exact versions of all the cookbooks that Berkshelf installed:

DEPENDENCIES
  my_cookbook
    path: .
    metadata: true

GRAPH
  apt (2.6.0)
  chef-client (3.9.0)
    cron (>= 1.2.0)
    logrotate (>= 1.2.0)
    windows (~> 1.11)
  chef_handler (1.1.6)
  cron (1.6.1)
  logrotate (1.7.0)
  my_cookbook (0.1.0)
    apt (>= 0.0.0)
    chef-client (>= 0.0.0)
    ntp (>= 0.0.0)
  ntp (1.6.8)
  windows (1.34.8)
    chef_handler (>= 0.0.0)

Berkshelf will only use the exact versions specified in the Berksfile.lock file, if it finds this file.

Finally, we use Berkshelf to upload all the required cookbooks on the Chef server:

berks upload

Berkshelf integrates tightly with Vagrant via the vagrant-berkshelf plugin. You can set up Berkshelf and Vagrant in such a way that Berkshelf installs and uploads all the required cookbooks on your Chef server whenever you execute vagrant up or vagrant provision. You'll save all the work of running berks install and berks upload manually before creating your node with Vagrant.

Let's see how you can integrate Berkshelf and Vagrant.

First, you need to install the Berkshelf plugin for Vagrant:

mma@mma-mbp:~/work/chef-repo (master)$ vagrant plugin install vagrant-berkshelf

Installing the 'vagrant-berkshelf' plugin. This can take a few minutes...
Installed the plugin 'vagrant-berkshelf (4.0.1)'!

Then, you need to tell Vagrant that you want to use the plugin. You do this by enabling the plugin in Vagrantfile:

mma@mma-mbp:~/work/chef-repo (master)$ subl Vagrantfile

config.berkshelf.enabled = true

Then, you need a Berksfile in the root directory of your Chef repository to tell Berkshelf which cookbooks to install on each Vagrant run:

source 'https://supermarket.chef.io'

cookbook 'my_cookbook', path: 'cookbooks/my_cookbook'

Eventually, you can start your VM using Vagrant. Berkshelf will first download and then install all the required cookbooks in the Berkshelf, and upload them on the Chef server. Only after all the cookbooks are made available on the Chef server by Berkshelf, will Vagrant go on:

mma@mma-mbp:~/work/chef-repo $ vagrant up

Bringing machine 'server' up with 'virtualbox' provider...

==> default: Loading Berkshelf datafile...
==> default: Updating Vagrant's Berkshelf...
==> default: Resolving cookbook dependencies...
==> default: Fetching 'my_cookbook' from source at cookbooks/my_cookbook
==> default: Fetching cookbook index from https://supermarket.getchef.com...
...TRUNCATED OUTPUT...

This way, using Berkshelf together with Vagrant, saves a lot of manual steps and gets faster cycle times for your cookbook development.