Need help with extending a plugin

hey folks

I've installed the plugin acts_as_taggable_on_steroids (henceforth aatos), and i already have some tagging functionality set up, using the same approach (ie a Tag and a Tagging class with associated tables) as aatos.

So, i want my existing Tag and Taggings methods, plus some other methods i have in a module which i include with the taggable classes (ie the ones that would call acts_as_taggable now) to be overlaid on top of the aatos ones (i'll probably end up deleting some of them because they replicate aatos methods).

I've got part of the way there by basically moving my own methods into a lib file (taggable_extensions.rb) which mirrors the acts_as_x plugin setup, and so in my taggable classes i now say

acts_as_taggable include TaggableExtensions

This is fine for those classes, although it would be nice if there was some way i could get aatos to automatically use these exensions without going in and hacking the plugin.

However, i'm not sure what to do with my Tag and Tagging class methods. Should i put those in the same module, in taggable_extensions? If so then how do i get them to be loaded? I guess these two questions are the same, ie "Can i push some modules into a plugin on startup without changing the plugin code?"

I have the feeling i'm missing something obvious and i can just push everything in taggable_extensions into the aatos plugin, from inside taggable_extensions. I just don't know how.

Here's what my current taggable_extensions.rb looks like

module ActiveRecord   module Acts

    module TaggableExtras       def self.included(base)         base.extend(ClassMethods)       end

      module ClassMethods         def acts_as_taggable_extras(options = {})           include ActiveRecord::Acts::TaggableExtras::InstanceMethods           extend ActiveRecord::Acts::TaggableExtras::SingletonMethods         end       end

      module SingletonMethods         #nothing here yet       end

      module InstanceMethods         #...some instance methods here, added to taggables       end

    end   end end