title: Merge attributes from different Chef cookbooks or recipes
body: <p>Is there a possibility to merge attributes from several cookbooks or recipes?</p>
  
  <p>What I want to achieve is the following:</p>
  
  <p><strong>cookbook 1</strong></p>
  
  <p>sets a default list of attributes
  like
         default[:bamboo][:agent][:attributes]                = {
             'system.attr-1'                           => 'test1'
         }</p>
  
  <p>in <em>template.conf</em>, I have</p>
  
  <pre><code>&lt;% if @options -%&gt;
  &lt;%   @options.sort.map do | option, value | -%&gt;
  &lt;%= option %&gt;=  &lt;%= value %&gt;
  &lt;%   end -%&gt;
  &lt;% end -%&gt;
  </code></pre>
  
  <p><strong>cookbook 2</strong></p>
  
  <p>inherent "cookbook 1"
  and have 2 recipes</p>
  
  <p>recipe1</p>
  
  <pre><code>   node.default[:bamboo][:agent][:attributes]                = {
         'system.attr-2'                           =&gt; 'test2'
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>recipe2</p>
  
  <pre><code>   node.default[:bamboo][:agent][:attributes]                = {
         'system.attr-3'                           =&gt; 'test3'
     }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Now what I want is that the <em>template.conf</em>
  from <em>"cookbook 1"</em> is updated/merged with the attributes of cookbook2 and those recipes.</p>
  
  <p>Is this possible?  If not, what are the other options?</p>