[chef] Chef question on copying files from file_cache_dir into correct location

[Michael Ward < >]

Hi,

We have recently started looking at using Chef and I just wanted to get some 
community advice around the correct 'Chef' way to copy files..

In particular, we want to be able to 'pre-load' some larger files (jar files, 
some other archive types, etc) into the Chef file cache so they are already 
present when our image is booted, which then need to be moved/copied out to 
the correct location. This is mostly to speed up initial Chef runs so we 
don't need to wait for the files to download over a slow link.

We currently use the remote_file resource for this, but either we specify the 
correct location in which case it ignores the file that already exists in our 
cache path (and re-downloads slowly), or we specify the cache location and 
then use a bash block afterwards to move or copy the file to it's final 
location which doesn't seem very 'elegant'.. Is there a better way ?

Regards,
Michael Ward.