[chef] [RFC] CHEF-50 - Portage use flags & keywords

[Kenneth Kalmer < >]

Dear chefs

I've updated CHEF-50 with some information, pasted in this email as well. I would like to solicit some feedback on how we can get this issue resolved.

Best

Currently Chef::Resource::Package doesn't give us the ability to pass arbitrary attributes that can be used by Chef::Provider::Package::Portage to manipulate the USE & KEYWORDS environment variables.

I can think of three possible routes to follow here, outlined below:

The first is to expand Chef::Resource::Package to accept a hash of environment variables that can be passed to the underlying package providers. This is generic enough, and could be used by other providers as well:

    package "net-dns/pdns" do

      action :install

      environment "USE" => "mysql"

    end

The above can then be interpreted by the Portage provider and executed as "USE=mysql emerge net-dns/pdns"

The second could be to implement two new providers specifically for Gentoo, one for manipulating use flags and the other for manipulating keywords (both through the corresponding /etc/portage/package.{use|keywords} files

    use "net-dns/pdns" do

      flags "mysql"

    end

    keywords "dev-db/couchdb" do

      accept "~x86"

    end

The last, and least desirable option would be to expand Chef::Resource::Package to accept 'use' and 'keywords' as attributes, but that blows it open to expansion from every child provider.

--
Kenneth Kalmer
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http://opensourcery.co.za
@kennethkalmer