[chef] How does metadata's "support" settings work?

[Oscar < >]

Hi All,

I am learning Chef and I am writing my first Cookbook.

I am having an issue that I described here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/26392727/why-cant-chef-resolve-my-cookbooks 

in which Chef basically can't find a cookbook I reference in my berkshelf file. (I reference others and they work).

The point is: I am referencing an iptables cookbook in an windows environment for testing purposes. I expect it to fail, but I expect it to fail because iptables is not present and not because it can't find the cookbook.

I noticed that simple_iptables has a supports settings in the metada and I found this link in this list: http://lists.opscode.com/sympa/arc/chef/2013-09/msg00388.html

I would like to know how the supports settings work: will it prevent the cookbook from being used in an environment which is not supported? Could it be the reason for the error I am getting?

Thanks!