How do I find where a ruby method is declared?

Question

I have a ruby method (deactivate!) that is on an activeRecord class. However, I can\'t seem to find where that method is declared.

There have been numerous develope

Answer 1

When I need to find where a method is declared on some class, say 'Model', I do

Model.ancestors.find {|c| c.instance_methods(false).include? :deactivate! }

This searches the ancestor tree in the same order that ruby does for the first that has the method in instance_methods(false), which only includes non-inherited methods.

Note: before ruby 1.9, the methods were listed as strings not symbols, so it would be

Model.ancestors.find {|c| c.instance_methods(false).include?('deactivate!') }