Compile time vs. run time in Chef recipes

Question

I have the following (simplified) recipe called java, to install Java of course.

File recipes/default.rb

include_recipe \"install_java\"

Answer 1

The best thing to do is write a custom resource using unified_mode, instead of a recipe:

resources/install_java.rb:

unified_mode true
provides :install_java

action :install do
  # Install RPM from yum repo via yum_install library function
  yum_install("jdk1.7.0_51")

  # List the directories in /usr/java
  jdk_dir = `ls -ld /usr/java/jdk1.* | sort | tail -1`
  if jdk_dir.empty?
    raise "Missing JDK installation"
  end
end

recipes/default.rb:

install_java  "install my java -- you could make this name_property the version"

Unified mode eliminates the compile/converge two-phase parsing so that this works, but the code must be moved to a custom resource (which confers additional usability benefits and is a best practice anyway -- now the resource can grow properties and can be reused to install different versions of java, etc).