[chef] variable scope in LWRPs

[Johannes Kleinlercher < >]

Hi all,

I have the following problem and I think its because I do not understand the variable scopes in Chef LWRPs.

You can look at the cookbook at https://github.com/jkleinlercher/chef_problems and simply test the behaviour with kitchen.

Even though I define the following very similar resources, I recognized, that the attribute 'colors' inherits from the previous defined resources. The attribute 'colors' is defaulted to "['blue']" and in the provider the element 'magenta' is added to the array. However, the second and third resource inherit the whole array from the previous resource. That is quite weird to me ...

Resource definition in recipes/default.rb:

chef_problems_problem1 "test1" do
     address "myaddress1"
     action :install
end

chef_problems_problem1 "test2" do
     address "myaddress2"
     action :install
end

chef_problems_problem1 "test3" do
    address "myaddress3"
    action :install
end

In the output of the kitchen converge you see that the variable new_resource.colors inherits the values of the previous resources:

     * chef_problems_problem1[test1] action install
   new_resource.colors at the beginning: ["blue"]

   Values of local variables:
   address: myaddress1
   colors: ["blue"]

   adding magenta to local variable colors

   colors after adding magenta: ["blue", "magenta"]
   new_resource.colors at the end: ["blue", "magenta"]


     * chef_problems_problem1[test2] action install
   new_resource.colors at the beginning: ["blue", "magenta"]

   Values of local variables:
   address: myaddress2
   colors: ["blue", "magenta"]

   adding magenta to local variable colors

   colors after adding magenta: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta"]
   new_resource.colors at the end: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta"]


     * chef_problems_problem1[test3] action install
   new_resource.colors at the beginning: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta"]

   Values of local variables:
   address: myaddress3
   colors: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta"]

   adding magenta to local variable colors

   colors after adding magenta: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta", "magenta"]
   new_resource.colors at the end: ["blue", "magenta", "magenta", "magenta"]

Maybe you can help me to find where the problem is here.

best regards,

Johannes