[chef] using attributes to pass information about resources between nodes

[Dmitry V'yal < >]

Hello Chefs,

several times I encountered the situation, there some of my nodes had a 
resource defined and other node(s) had to generate some file based on 
attributes of resources of other nodes. As advised, I made use of node 
attributes to make the needed data available to other nodes. After it 
chef's search functionality allows to get the data and build the file.

The trouble arises then the resource is defined on the node which later 
generates the file. The attribute gets updated _after_ the compile phase 
when file resource is defined. So in order to converge two chef runs 
must be made.

This can be solved by defining the resource inside the ruby_block, but 
it looks awful.

Another problem is that even then using ruby_block chef index gets 
updated too late, so in addition to iterating the search results I have 
to manually merge the data from node attribute. Is there a way to update 
the index in the middle of chef run?

The described scheme works, but it's far from being clear and ideal. 
There should be a better way. Chefs? :)

Best regards,
Dmitry