Why do I need to require my gem in application.rb so that I can use its settings in production?

rubyonrails-core
1

I’ve released a new Engine yesterday, called oojspec:

https://github.com/rosenfeld/oojspec

It is a testing framework similar to Jasmine.js and Buster.js and it

is integrated to the Rails asset pipeline.

The problem is that I don't understand why I need this line in my

example application hosted on Heroku:

https://github.com/rosenfeld/oojspec-test/blob/master/config/application.rb#L18

I need `require "oojspec"` just before using the setting declared by

the gem:

https://github.com/rosenfeld/oojspec-test/blob/master/config/application.rb#L70

And the require is needed only when running under production

environment.

This is not a major problem for oojspec itself since it is not meant

to be run under production but by a rake task instead (rake sandbox_assets:serve).

But I became curious. Why isn't Bundler automatically requiring my

gems before the block in application.rb?

Is there something I could do from the engine gem to expose the

option to application.rb without requiring the gem to be explicitly loaded before the block?

Thanks in advance,

Rodrigo.
2

You’d want to move your gem out of assets if you want it to be available in other environments on heroku.

Allen Madsen http://www.allenmadsen.com

3

These comments in your gemfile explain why: https://github.com/rosenfeld/oojspec-test/blob/master/Gemfile#L10:L11

Allen Madsen

http://www.allenmadsen.com

4

Thank you, Allen! That makes sense. I’ve already extracted it out of the assets group.

Cheers,

Rodrigo.