Deprecation: Custom Resource Cleanups (CHEF-5)

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We are continuously improving and streamlining the way custom resources work in Chef, to make it easier for cookbook authors and Chef developers to build resources.

This page documents many deprecations over the course of many Chef releases.

Nil Properties

In current versions of Chef, nil was often used to mean that a property had no good default, and needed to be set by the user. However, it is often to useful to set a property to nil, meaning that it’s not set and should be ignored. In Chef Client 13, it is an error to set default: nil on a property if that property doesn’t allow nil as a valid value.

Remediation

If it is valid for the property to be set to nil, then update the property to include that.

property :my_nillable_property, [ String, nil ], default: nil

Otherwise, remove the default: nil statement from the property.

Invalid Defaults

Current versions of Chef emit a warning when a property’s default value is not valid. This is often because the type of the default value doesn’t match the specification of the property. For example:

property :my_property, [ String ], default: []

sets the type of the property to be a String, but then sets the default to be an Array. In Chef Client 13, this will be an error.

Remediation

Ensure that the default value of a property is correct.

Property Getters

When writing a resource in Chef Client 12, calling some_property nil behaves as a getter, returning the value of some_property. In Chef Client 13, this will change to set some_property to nil.

Remediation

Simply write some_property when retrieving the value of some_property.

Specifying both “default” and “name_property” on a resource

Current versions of Chef emit a warning if the property declaration has both default and name_property set. In Chef Client 13, that will become an error. For example:

property :my_property, [ String ], default: [], name_property: true

Remediation

A property can either have a default, or it can be a “name” property (meaning that it will take the value of the resource’s name if not otherwise specified), but not both.

Overriding provides?

Some providers override the provides? method, used to check whether they are a valid provider on the current platform. In Chef Client 13, this will cause an error if the provider does not also register themselves with the provides call.

Example

def provides?
  true
end

Remediation

provides :my_provider

def provides?
  true
end

Don’t use the updated method

The updated=(true_or_false) method is deprecated and will be removed from Chef Client 13. This method never performed its intended job, as notifications from the resource would not fire, and in general its use has always been buggy. The Chef Infra Client notification code checks updated_by_last_action? instead, so setting that is recommended as a substitute. See the updated_by_last_action documentation for more information.

Example

action :foo do
  updated = true
end

Remediation

action :foo do
  new_resource.updated_by_last_action true
end

Don’t use the dsl_name method

The dsl_name method is deprecated and will be removed from Chef Client

1. It has been replaced by resource_name.

Example

my_resource = MyResource.dsl_name

Remediation

my_resource = MyResource.resource_name

Don’t use the provider_base method

The Resource.provider_base allows the developer to specify an alternative module to load providers from, rather than Chef::Provider. It is deprecated and will be removed in Chef Client 13. Instead, the provider should call provides to register itself, or the resource should call provider to specify the provider to use.