[chef] Overriding dependencies

[Steve Hummingbird < >]

I am facing the following problem:

I have forked the opscode java cookbook, since I needed to add some features 
(pull request already submitted)
I created a wrapper cookbook around the java cookbook, which is called 
oracle-java, which manages the actual java installation.

Now I am trying to create a wrapper cookbook for tomcat, which just sets some 
meaningful defaults for my infrastructure when installing tomcat.

When installing tomcat via my tomcat-wrapper cookbook, I noticed that the 
tomcat cookbook fails, as the java keytool is not present where it is 
expected. Up on closer inspection, I noticed that the tomcat cookbook pulls 
in openjdk. I tried running the oracle-java cookbook before running the 
tomcat cookbook, but that didn't change anything. It seems that the tomcat 
cookbook just overrides the previous oracle java installation.

I am using - or at least trying to use - Berkshelf to manage my dependencies.

How do I tell my tomcat wrapper cookbook to not use the java cookbook and use 
the already existing java installation? Or, even better, not use the java 
cookbook and use the oracle-java cookbook, which depends on my fork of the 
java cookbook?

Thanks,
Steve