[[chef-dev]] Re: [[chef-dev]] Re: [[chef-dev]] Re: [[chef-dev]] CHEF-1621 -"recursive" attributeon "directory" resource does not apply users and groups to entire path

[Chad Woolley < >]

On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 9:06 PM, Seth Falcon 
<
 >
 wrote:
> While I find the specified-user-owns-created-parents behavior least
> surprising, I have concerns that it is ultimately not useful.  If you
> actually need the results of that behavior, you should do it
> explicitly else your recipe will be brittle.

It does meet the principle of least surprise, and there are
justifications for it.

However, I'd like to hear the justifications for why it is "not
useful" or "brittle".

For single-role boxes and workstations, I personally like to have as
much as possible user-owned.  This approach is gaining popularity
(e.g. RVM, Homebrew).  For these type of boxes, the root-centric
approach doesn't make as much sense as it did in the old days of
multi-user multi-use boxes where you had to lock stuff down so people
wouldn't break it (and one of chef's main purposes is to solve that!).
 Having more stuff owned by root just forces you to use sudo more (and
all the associated issues, such as jumping through hoops to preserve
environment variables properly when using sudo).  Heresy?  Perhaps.
Do the simplest thing, I say...

But I digress.  In any case, there should be a way to do this, even if
it is a non-default option.  Having to explicitly create each
non-root-owned directory in a tree is silly.

-- Chad