[chef] dependency issue with cookbook that uses gem with native code

[Eric Swenson < >]

I'm trying to provision a server with a cookbook that uses the mysql_database 
resource from the database cookbook.  This cookbook depends on the mysql 
cookbook, which requires building due to references to native code (e.g. 
libmysqlclient).  In trying to bootstrap a brand new node, which doesn't have 
gcc (and other build-essential components), I cannot get past the error:

Error executing action `install` on resource 'chef_gem[mysql]'

My cookbook has a "depends" statement for the "database" cookbook.  And that 
cookbook has a dependency on "mysql". Prior to executing any of the recipes 
in any of the defined cookbook, chef-client tries to compile the cookbooks it 
knows it needs.  It can't build the "mysql" cookbook because gcc is not yet 
installed. While I've added "recipe[build-essential]" to the head of my 
run_list for the role, chef-client never gets this far, as it wants to 
compile all cookbooks in the dependency list prior to executing any of the 
recipes in the run list.

How do I get around this?   I want to bootstrap a node that doesn't have gcc 
installed (yet).  How do I get chef-client to install the build-essential 
package BEFORE compiling cookbooks?

-- Eric