Is there any means for having an external library loaded before ActiveSupport is loaded when starting up a Rails app?
What does you mean?
You can create class in lib folder. For example: my_class.rb -> class MyClass ; end
Rails will load your library.
You have to load those manually. So that doesn't help.
We can put scripts in config/initializers, however these are loaded into the system AFTER ActiveSupport has been loaded. I need a way to load a library BEFORE ActiveSupport.
The reason is to load other libraries that may also have core extensions, but to let ActiveSupport's take precedence in case of conflicts.
Hey, I think I figured it out. Snooping around config/boot.rb I discovered a (little known?) feature. You can create a config/ preinitializer.rb file and that will be loaded first off. Nice.