This cookbook is a transition cookbook aimed at helping move from the pre-chef_gem era to the post chef_gem era. The chef_gem resource was introducde in Chef 0.10.9, providing an easy mechanism for installing and using gems required by Chef internally. When used within an omnibus installation, chef_gems are installed within the embedded Ruby.

For pre 0.10.9 Chef installations, it provides a chef_gem compatible resouce allowing cookbooks to be updated but not requiring full conversions. For installations under 0.10.12, some patches are added to aid in proper omnibus functionality allowing chef_gem to work as expected. For Chef installations of 0.10.12 and beyond, this cookbook provides nothing. This means you will get consistent and expected behavior across Chef versions.

Notable attributes (note that these should only be required for special cases):

• node[:gem_binary] = '/usr/local/bin/gem'
• node[:chef_gem_binary] = '/opt/opscode/embedded/bin/gem'

With the release of 0.10.12 this cookbook should be considered deprecated and used only for compatibility with older installations.

• https://github.com/hw-cookbooks/chef_gem
• IRC: Freenode @ #heavywater