Rails3 not reloading code in lib while in development mode

Question

THE SITUATION:

1. I have code in lib/foo/bar.rb with a simple method defined as such:

   module Foo
     class Bar
                
   
   
           

Answer 1

They removed the lib folder the app root in Rails 3.

You can either add it back

config.autoload_paths << 'lib'

or you can use `require_dependency` in your helper.

module FooBarHelper
  require_dependency 'foo/bar'

  def test_foo_bar
    fb = Foo::Bar.new
    fb.test
  end
end

Both ways tell Rails that your file lib/foo/bar.rb should be autoloaded and subsequently, reloaded each request.

Answer 2

Why are you putting the require into the module, when using autoload_path you should not need to require the file at all, it should be working without, I think if you manually require the file afterwards, rails does not know when to load it again?

Something like this:

require `bar`

module FooBarHelper

  def test_foo_bar
    fb = Foo::Bar.new
    fb.test
  end

end

should work, no need for having the require inside your module.

Answer 3

Previous answers does not work. Here is a working one: http://ileitch.github.com/2012/03/24/rails-32-code-reloading-from-lib.html

You have to use both:

config.watchable_dirs['lib'] = [:rb]

and

require_dependency

but any config.autoload_paths based solution won't work in Rails ~> 3.2

Answer 4

Autoloading code from the lib folder was intentionally disabled in rails3, see this ticket for more details.

The workaround suggested by Samuel is a great start, however I found that certain environments still had difficulty finding the libraries in a testing environment (say being invoked from a cucumber scenario), and that including the root path, as suggested within the ticket and hinted by the original comment in application.rb was a more robust approach:

config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/lib)