_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 for the official Chef release notes._ # Chef Client Release Notes 13.0: ## Back Compat Breaks ### The path property of the execute resource has been removed It was never implemented in the provider, so it was always a no-op to use it, the remediation is to simply delete it. ### Using the command property on any script resource (including bash, etc) is now a hard error This was always a usage mistake. The command property was used internally by the script resource and was not intended to be exposed to users. Users should use the code property instead (or use the command property on an execute resource to execute a single command). ### Omitting the code property on any script resource (including bash, etc) is now a hard error It is possible that this was being used as a no-op resource, but the log resource is a better choice for that until we get a null resource added. Omitting the code property or mixing up the code property with the command property are also common usage mistakes that we need to catch and error on. ### The chef_gem resource defaults to not run at compile time The `compile_time true` flag may still be used to force compile time. ### The Chef::Config[:chef_gem_compile_time] config option has been removed In order to for community cookbooks to behave consistently across all users this optional flag has been removed. ### The `supports[:manage_home]` and `supports[:non_unique]` API has been removed from all user providers The remediation is to set the manage_home and non_unique properties directly. ### Using relative paths in the `creates` property of an execute resource with specifying a `cwd` is now a hard error Without a declared cwd the relative path was (most likely?) relative to wherever chef-client happened to be invoked which is not deterministic or easy to intuit behavior. ### Chef::PolicyBuilder::ExpandNodeObject#load_node has been removed This change is most likely to only affect internals of tooling like chefspec if it affects anything at all. ### PolicyFile failback to create non-policyfile nodes on Chef Server < 12.3 has been removed PolicyFile users on Chef-13 should be using Chef Server 12.3 or higher. ### Cookbooks with self dependencies are no longer allowed The remediation is removing the self-dependency `depends` line in the metadata. ### Removed `supports` API from Chef::Resource Retained only for the service resource (where it makes some sense) and for the mount resource. ### Removed deprecated `method_missing` access from the Chef::Node object Previously, the syntax `node.foo.bar` could be used to mean `node["foo"]["bar"]`, but this API had sharp edges where methods collided with the core ruby Object class (e.g. `node.class`) and where it collided with our own ability to extend the `Chef::Node` API. This method access has been deprecated for some time, and has been removed in Chef-13. ### Changed `declare_resource` API Dropped the `create_if_missing` parameter that was immediately supplanted by the `edit_resource` API (most likely nobody ever used this) and converted the `created_at` parameter from an optional positional parameter to a named parameter. These changes are unlikely to affect any cookbook code. ### Node deep-duping fixes The `node.to_hash`/`node.to_h` and `node.dup` APIs have been fixed so that they correctly deep-dup the node data structure including every string value. This results in a mutable copy of the immutable merged node structure. This is correct behavior, but is now more expensive and may break some poor code (which would have been buggy and difficult to follow code with odd side effects before). For example: ``` node.default["foo"] = "fizz" n = node.to_hash # or node.dup n["foo"] << "buzz" ``` before this would have mutated the original string in-place so that `node["foo"]` and `node.default["foo"]` would have changed to "fizzbuzz" while now they remain "fizz" and only the mutable `n["foo"]` copy is changed to "fizzbuzz". ### Freezing immutable merged attributes Since Chef 11 merged node attributes have been intended to be immutable but the merged strings have not been frozen. In Chef 13, in the process of merging the node attributes strings and other simple objects are dup'd and frozen. In order to get a mutable copy, you can now correctly use the `node.dup` or `node.to_hash` methods, or you should mutate the object correctly through its precedence level like `node.default["some_string"] << "appending_this"`. ### The Chef::REST API has been removed It has been fully replaced with `Chef::ServerAPI` in chef-client code. ### Properties overriding methods now raise an error Defining a property that overrides methods defined on the base ruby `Object` or on `Chef::Resource` itself can cause large amounts of confusion. A simple example is `property :hash` which overrides the Object#hash method which will confuse ruby when the Custom Resource is placed into the Chef::ResourceCollection which uses a Hash internally which expects to call Object#hash to get a unique id for the object. Attempting to create `property :action` would also override the Chef::Resource#action method which is unlikely to end well for the user. Overriding inherited properties is still supported.