[COOK-3393] Installing from source fails or breaks yum

[tjcravey]

Attempting to do a source install by overriding the attribute node['python']['install_method'] fails.

Fixing this led to other fixes and enhancements. Full details here: http://tickets.opscode.com/browse/COOK-3393

[coderanger]

Creating the cache folder is way out of scope for this cookbook, that should be handled by the Chef installer. The rest of this is oddly 2.7-specific, not sure if you meant this for an internal repo perhaps.

[tjcravey]

Thanks. Updating to a newer version of Chef corrected the issue I was having with remote_file failing because the cache directory didn't exist.

Setting the 'install_method' attribute to 'source' still results in a broken package manager on yum based distros. My fixes were 2.7 specific because the current default installed by this cookbook is 2.7.5. I see though that this is configurable through an attribute. Would allowing the option to do a 'make altinstall' instead of a 'make install' be something you'd like to have contributed back if I can make it less version specific by leveraging this attribute?

[tjcravey]

Update available here (#52) if desired.