It seems to me that `berks upload` (since it pulls in all the dependencies) would be the more useful thing to do and that is something that is installed by the `Gemfile` (although `knife` is as well indirectly through `chefspec`). Also, since Berkshelf hasn't really had support for plugins, we have tools like `rightscale_upload` which wrap it.

As to the question about every cookbook, the answer is, of course, "it depends". It makes sense to included it in cookbooks that go directly into ServerTemplates, such as `rs-base` and `rs-haproxy`, but it doesn't need to go into most of the library cookbooks. I think that `rightscale_volume` is an exception to this since it really only works inside of RightScale and doesn't make sense to use in Vagrant or Test Kitchen.