Description

Installs packages required for compiling C software from source. Use this cookbook if you wish to compile C programs, or install RubyGems with native extensions.

Requirements

Chef version 0.10.10+ and Ohai 0.6.12+ are required.

Platform

Supported platforms by platform family:

• debian (debian, ubuntu)
• fedora
• mac_os_x (10.6+)
• rhel (centos, redhat, amazon, scientific)
• smartos
• solaris2
• omnios

Note for OmniOS: Currently, OmniOS's Ruby package is built with GCC 4.6.3, and the path is hardcoded, as the gcc binaries are not installed in the default $PATH. This means that in order to install RubyGems into the "system" Ruby, one must install developer/gcc46. An issue is open upstream w/ OmniOS to rebuild the Ruby package with GCC 4.7.2.

Cookbooks

This cookbook suggests the following external cookbooks:

• pkgin (someara) - SmartOS only
• pkgutil (marthag) - Solaris 2 only

Attributes

• node['build_essential']['compiletime'] - Whether the resources in the default recipe should be configured at the "Compile" phase of the Chef run. Defaults to false, see Usage for more information.
• node['build_essential']['osx']['gcc_installer_url'] - The URL of the OS X GCC package installer (.pkg).
• node['build_essential']['osx']['gcc_installer_checksum'] - The SHA256 checksum of the OS X GCC installer.

Recipes

The main entrypoint for this cookbook is the default recipe. This recipe includes a platform specific recipe based on the node's platform family.

On Linux platforms (see Platform above for a supported list of families), packages required to build C source projects are installed. This includes GCC, make, autconf and others. On Debian-family distributions, the apt-cache may need to be updated, especially during compile time installation. See Usage for further information.

On Mac OS X, the GCC standalone installer by Kenneth Reitz is installed. Note that this is not the Xcode CLI package, as that does not include all programs and headers required to build some common GNU-style C projects, such as those that are available from projects such as MacPorts or Homebrew. Changing the attributes for the GCC installer URL and checksum to the Xcode values may work, but this is untested.

Usage

Simply include the build-essential and the required tools will be installed to the system, and later recipes will be able to compile software from C source code.

For RubyGems that include native C extensions you wish to use with Chef, you should do two things.

0. Ensure that the C libraries, include files and other assorted "dev" type packages are installed. You should do this in the compile phase after the build-essential recipe.
1. Use the chef_gem resource in your recipes. This requires Chef version 0.10.10+.
2. Set the compiletime attribute in roles where such recipes are required. This will ensure that the build tools are available to compile the RubyGems' extensions, as chef_gem happens during the compile phase, too.

Example installation of a devel package at compile-time in a recipe:

package "mypackage-dev" do
  action :nothing
end.run_action(:install)

Example use of chef_gem:

chef_gem "mygem"

Example role:

name "myapp"
run_list(
  "recipe[build-essential]",
  "recipe[myapp]"
)
default_attributes(
  "build_essential" => {
    "compiletime" => true
  }
)

The compile time option (via the attribute) is to ensure that the proper packages are available at the right time in the Chef run. It is recommended that the build-essential recipe appear early in the run list.

The Chef wiki has documentation on the anatomy of a chef run.

Limitations

It is not in the scope of this cookbook to handle installing the required headers for individual software projects in order to compile them, or to compile RubyGems with native C extensions. You should create a cookbook for handling that.

License and Author

Author:: Joshua Timberman (joshua@opscode.com) Author:: Seth Chisamore (schisamo@opscode.com)

Copyright 2009-2011, Opscode, Inc. (legal@opscode.com)

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.