bootstrap_options are a Hash with symbols as keys

[jtimberman]

When using node attributes to pass into with_machine_options,
conditional tests that check, for example whether the bootstrap
options contains a key name, we have logic like this

Conditional checks in chef-provisioning use symbols as the hash keys.
This means that users cannot be assured that passing in the hash as a
node attribute in a recipe will get what they expect. For example,
chef-provisioning-aws has this conditional:

!bootstrap_options[:key_name]

However, if I set my bootstrap_options as an attribute like this:

default['driver']['machine_options'] = {
                      :ssh_username => 'ubuntu',
                      :use_private_ip_for_ssh => false,
                      :bootstrap_options => {
                                             :key_name => 'hc-metal-provisioner',
                                             :image_id => 'ami-b99ed989',
                                             :flavor_id => 'm3.medium'
                                            }
                    }

While :key_name is specified as a symbol, Chef actually turns this
into a string since it's an attribute.

I can work around this by converting the attribute to a hash and then
walking the hash to convert all strings to symbols, but it would be
preferable that I can just shove my attributes into
with_machine_options and it does the magic thing to work :).

[tyler-ball]

I talked with @jkeiser about this - we want to stop transforming objects that are passed as machine_options, bootstrap_options, etc. Right now we call .to_hash on those options (I think from here) which loses the ability to reference the attribute mash correctly. But because there is a workaround for this we are going to hold off until after the 1.0 release.

[jtimberman]

Any further consideration of this?

[jkeiser]

It does seem important: we should be able to accept node attributes with hash values in machine_options. @tyler-ball

[szymonpk]

Any updates on this? Maybe I can help somehow? I would like to love to use Mash as machine_options or at least I would like to avoid converting node attributes to hash.