[chef] Installing large numbers of packages

[Matt Palmer < >]

I'm getting my first chef recipe in order, a simple one to prep a
workstation -- which is mostly "install this giant list of packages".

I was surprised to find that the simple, obvious way to do this:

    package %w{foo bar baz} do
        action :install
    end

Didn't work.  Resources don't accept an array as the namevar to do the
obvious thing.  Instead, I've got to do either:

    package "foo" do
        action :install
    end

    package "bar" do
        action :install
    end

    package "baz" do
        action :install
    end

Which is ridiculously verbose, or else:

    %w{foo bar baz}.each do |pkg|
        package pkg do
            action :install
        end
    end

Which doesn't do anything for my "but you don't need to learn *much*
Ruby" claims to the rest of the team, and still isn't as compact and
clean as it could be.

Am I missing something obvious, or is one of the above options really
the recommended way to create big lists of resources?

Thanks,
- Matt