📂 directory

📂 directory

Manage directories on the target system — create, delete, and set ownership/permissions.

⚡ Actions

Action Description
:create Create the directory (default)
:delete Remove the directory
:nothing Do nothing (use with notifications)

📋 Attributes

Attribute Type Default Description
path String Resource name Path to the directory (auto-set from resource name)
mode String — Permissions (e.g., '0755')
owner String — Directory owner
group String — Directory group

🔍 How It Works

  1. Check existence — Verifies if the directory exists on the target
  2. Create if missing — Creates the directory (including parent directories)
  3. Set attributes — Applies mode, owner, and group if specified
  4. Idempotent — If the directory exists with the correct attributes, no changes are made

💡 Mode strings are normalized to 4 characters with zero-padding (e.g., '755' becomes '0755') for consistent comparison.

🔬 Dry-Run Behavior

Current mode, owner, and group are queried from the existing directory. You see exactly what permissions would change. No directories are created or removed.

📖 Examples

Create a directory

directory '/var/www/app' do
  mode '0755'
  owner 'www-data'
  group 'www-data'
end

Create nested directories

%w[releases shared shared/log shared/config].each do |dir|
  directory "/opt/app/#{dir}" do
    owner 'deploy'
    mode '0755'
  end
end

Delete a directory

directory '/tmp/old-cache' do
  action :delete
end

Secure directory permissions

directory '/home/deploy/.ssh' do
  mode '0700'
  owner 'deploy'
  group 'deploy'
end