A crib-sheet of the chef deploy commands written up by Vaibhav Verma in Confluence

vaibhav-verma.chef-deploy-crib-sheet.2016-06-09

# If knife-spork and knife-flip aren't installed, you can run
/opt/chef/embedded/bin/gem install knife-spork knife-flip
  
#make our changes locally to the cookbook
  
knife spork check apache
# this will ask you if you want to bump the version of apache, and you say yes
knife spork upload apache
# this will put the new version of apache on the chef server, but nothing will get deployed yet.
knife node flip $(hostname) testing
# this puts your VM in the testing environment, so your VM starts getting the latest version of every cookbook.
knife node show $(hostname)
# this will show that you're in the testing environment.
sudo chef-client --once
# this runs chef on your VM, so it picks up the new config
# check that your config changed as expected.
knife spork promote apache
# this changes environments/production.js in your local directory to point to the new version of apache.
git commit && git push
# chef and git don't know about each other. Let's push the change to git before we put it on production servers.
knife spork promote apache --remote
# this will start making all production servers pick up your new version of apache.
knife node flip $(hostname) production
# this will turn your VM back to the production environment instead of testing.