[chef] Does chef-solo treat node.set differently than chef-client?

[Dan Crosta < >]

A user reported a bug [1] against one of my cookbooks that has me stumped: 
one of my LWRPs accumulates state by setting node attributes using something 
like node.set["foo"]["bar"] = "baz". This state is later used in a template.

With chef-client, this works as expected -- the attribute is set and readable 
(as node["foo"]["bar"]) at the time the template is evaluated. With 
chef-solo, the attribute is set, and I can verify by .inspect'ing the 
attribute in a Chef::Log.debug message (it shows up under @current_normal); 
however, when the template renders, it is as though the attribute had never 
been set at all. More puzzling, if I change the node.set to a node.default, 
it works correctly.

I am completely baffled by this behavior -- is it expected? Is it a bug in 
chef-solo? Or a bug in my LWRP or recipe? Any help would be appreciated.

- Dan


[1] https://github.com/dcrosta/cookbook-simple-iptables/issues/5