Noop Resource

I was wondering if anyone has ever had a use case where they created a resource
that does nothing itself but strings together multiple notifications using
not_if and only_if to control when it runs.

In my case I want to upgrade my application and the best way to do it is to,
stop the service, remove the application, and re-install (the service is
automatically started later).

I have a ‘bash’ resource for installing the application and I am also using the
service resource to control start/stop.

The best method to do this seems to be to create a execute/ruby_block resource
that prints ‘upgrading’ and then notifies the correct resources in order [stop,
remove, install] if the application needs to be upgraded.

It is possible for me to modify my install resource to have it take care of
upgrading as well but I still wouldn’t be able to use the service resource for
stop/start since I have to stop it before the resource runs. Doing this also
seems very un-chef like.