Understanding Ruby's load paths

Question

I\'m a little confused about why my project can\'t load the files it needs, it\'s a really simple project tree:

processor/
  bin/
  lib/
    processor.rb
            


        

Answer 1

Use Ruby's require_relative in this case:

require_relative "processor/mapper"

Answer 2

Ruby's $LOAD_PATH will not include your lib directory by default (even though that's where the file you're running is located).

You can either tell the ruby interpreter to include it:

ruby -Ilib lib/processor.rb

Or you can add the lib folder to the load path:

$LOAD_PATH.unshift(File.dirname(__FILE__))
require  'processor/mapper'
...

Answer 3

Ruby 1.9 no longer includes "." in the load path. Do require "#{File.dirname(__FILE__)}/processor/mapper" or use require_relative.

You can always determine the current load path by inspecting $LOAD_PATH (or $:)

(edited: $LOAD_PATH not $:LOAD_PATH)