[chef-dev] Re: Re: Re: dependency spaghetti

[Dimitri Aivaliotis < >]

On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 2:32 AM, Noah Kantrowitz 
<
 >
 wrote:
> There has been a long running concept to turn #suggests into an optional 
> form of #depends, so it would have the same effect as depends if the 
> cookbook is found in terms of triggering a download and loading in the 
> right order, but wouldn't cause a failure if that cookbook wasn't found. 
> Maybe after I get this dialect stuff squared away I'll write up that patch 
> :)
>

I like this.  It's better than 'suggests' just being a no-op.  An
alternative may be to enable case statements in metadata.rb.  The
individual depends could then properly be resolved based on platform
or recipe usage.  The client can then filter based on the case in the
cookbook's metadata, and only download those cookbooks it really
needs.

This would be a further step towards making metadata actually useful.
It remains to be seen which is more easily implemented/accepted.

- Dimitri