Progress Chef Infra Client, the flagship configuration management agent from Progress Chef, is built upon the Ruby language platform. Like most Ruby software, Chef Infra Client is internally composed of components known as Gems. These Gems may be publicly distributed via a hub, rubygems.org. Progress Chef publishes several internal components of Chef Infra Client to rubygems.org, including the core library, chef.
Chef Infra Client 19 introduces new licensing requirements. When distributed in an official Progress distribution (such as an RPM, DEB, or MSI) or through a Progress RubyGem server, runtime licensing is not required. However, when obtained through any other channel, including the public rubygems.org server, a license key is required at runtime.
You can get limited-capability license keys on a free and trial basis or contact us for commercial licenses.
While most users install Chef Infra Client from a native package (and will thus be unaffected), those who wish for additional control over the Gem ecosystem may opt for direct installation of the chef gem. This may be done at the CLI or in a pipeline. In this case, a license key will be required.
The best way to get Knife is via Workstation from a native package. Users wishing for more control in the future can look to our new Hab-based installation system for Chef Workstation 26. Previously, to get this effect, gem installation was the only answer. In this case, users would need to provide a license key to use Chef or bootstrap nodes.
If a user uses Chef in another Gem, they will require a license key.
Gem-based installs of test-kitchen do not depend on the chef gem. It bootstraps instances; it does not converge locally. However, for Chef 19 support, users will need to switch to Chef Test Kitchen Enterprise following the release of Workstation 26, which introduces forward support for Chef Infra Client licensing and advanced Habitat-based installs.
Users of the OS-native installer have already used their license key at download time. They are thus free to distribute the binary within their organization according to the terms of their License. These native binaries do not require runtime licensing.
To begin your journey with enhanced support, a complete ecosystem, and access to premium content, contact your Progress sales representative for a commercial license. To obtain a free or trial license key for only Chef Infra Client, submit a License Request.
You may set the CHEF_LICENSE_KEY environment variable to provide the license key. This may be done through automation, a secrets manager, or manually.
You may use the CLI option `--license-key` to provide the license key.
If the license key is not provided through an environment variable or the CLI option, Chef Infra Client will detect if the terminal is interactive and then prompt the user for a license key. If non-interactive, Chef Infra Client will issue errors and exit.
To obtain a new license: