Install libshadow-ruby1.8 package? about chef-user

[fnichol]

The only reason that I didn't add this initially is to mirror the Chef user resource (http://wiki.opscode.com/display/chef/Resources#Resources-User under the "Prerequisites" heading). I'm not 100% sure why they made that decision but maybe it is because that could involve a compilation tool-chain for the bindings? Maybe I should see that people have to say about in on #chef (IRC).

[patcon]

Hmmm... I'm sort a self-taught, and you've shamed me into admitting that I don't quite know what "could involve a compilation tool-chain for the bindings" means... :S

I'd say it makes sense to find out the rationale though. Don't suppose you heard back?

Also, might make most sense to fork one of these cookbooks (maybe generalizing past ruby1.9) and add a dependency:
https://github.com/cookbooks/ruby-shadow/
https://github.com/biilmann/ruby-shadow-cookbook

I'll try #chef and report back if anyone has anything useful to contribute.

[fnichol]

Hey there, just doing some cleanup on issues. I'm hoping it'll be okay to have a soft dependency on ruby-shadow here, that is to ensure ruby-shadow is installed if managing passwords. If we added the ruby-shadow gem then we'd be forcing an install of gcc/make/autoconf/etc. However, I didn't realize this wasn't in the docs. Does that commit above help point out what to do? Thanks!

[patcon]

When I originally posted this, I didn't quite play the dependency management game as conservatively as I do now. In 100% agreement on your docs approach :)

[natejenkins]

Hey guys, I realize I'm a bit late to the game on this issue but I just encountered this problem and had some trouble figuring out what to do. As a definite chef non-expert, I didn't know how to install a missing gem, and I still don't find the opscode documentation to be of much help for any issue.

After searching around I saw some mentions of chef_gem, and eventually I just tried:
chef_gem 'ruby-shadow'
in my recipe before user_account, and it worked.

However, it would have been really helpful to have a bit more info in the exception message. I'm still not sure if my solution is the standard way of including a gem.

Great cookbook by the way, thanks for making it!

cheers,
nate