resource running twice...

a_resource_loading_twice.md

Take a look at the gist below for the code in question. Essentially it is taking a hash of packages with name and version key/value pairs, then iterating over them to populate the chef_gem resource.

We just discovered that this code is being run twice when executing chef-client on the node. After a bit of digging in the anatomy of a chef run wiki page, we discovered the following snippet that explained why this is happening.

http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Anatomy+of+a+Chef+Run

Here:

Load Recipes

At this point, the Recipes themselves are evaluated. We are not taking any action on the resources in the recipes at this stage - we are taking each evaluated resource and putting it in the Resource Collection.

• This is essentially an Array of each evaluated resource, along with some helpful functions.
• Plain Ruby code outside of resources is evaluated, however.
• If you would like Ruby code executed with other resources, use a Ruby Block Resource.
• You can have Chef Evaluate and Run Resources at Compile Time, too.

This points out that plain old ruby code that is not part of a resource will be executed when a recipe is loaded, and then again later when convergence happens. That explains why it's running twice. My question is, what is the best practice for taking a list of dependencies (name and version) then running it through the chef resource to do the install only when chef converges on the node?

chef_gems.rb

gem_deps = [
  {
    'name' => 'tiny_tds',    
    'version' => ''
  },    
  {
    'name' => 'activerecord-sqlserver-adapter',
    'version' => '3.1.0'
  }
]

gem_deps.each do |dep|    
  chef_gem dep['name'] do    
    action :install
    version dep['version'] unless dep['version'].empty?
  end
end