Gentoo Portage provider needs ability to manipulate keywords, use flags, etc.

Currently Chef::Resource::Package doesn't give us the ability to pass arbitrary attributes that can be used by Chef::Provider::Package::Portage to manipulate the USE & KEYWORDS environment variables.

I can think of three possible routes to follow here, outlined below:

The first is to expand Chef::Resource::Package to accept a hash of environment variables that can be passed to the underlying package providers. This is generic enough, and could be used by other providers as well:

package "net-dns/pdns" do
action :install
environment "USE" => "mysql"
end

The above can then be interpreted by the Portage provider and executed as "USE=mysql emerge net-dns/pdns"

The second could be to implement two new providers specifically for Gentoo, one for manipulating use flags and the other for manipulating keywords (both through the corresponding /etc/portage/package.{use|keywords} files

use "net-dns/pdns" do
flags "mysql"
end

keywords "dev-db/couchdb" do
accept "~x86"
end

The last, and least desirable option would be to expand Chef::Resource::Package to accept 'use' and 'keywords' as attributes, but that blows it open to expansion from every child provider.

Proof of concept published by veszig -> http://github.com/veszig/gentoo-cookbooks

I'm happy to see this get added so that you can manage this with a more reasonable, integrated interface in Chef. I'm downgrading it's priority, because it looks like the cookbook approach that vesig posted will work.

I rewrote my cookbooks and gentoo package management is now based on a library and LWRP: http://github.com/veszig/gentoo-cookbooks/tree/master/gentoo/
The previous definition-based approach is here: http://github.com/veszig/gentoo-cookbooks/tree/236f2b40504a07f03f20961a8d5d0bade793d46b/portage

Should this functionality be merged into Chef proper, or is it best left as (a) separate cookbook(s)?