How to require a ruby file from another directory

I am trying to require a rake file that I have created inside another file I have. These two files are inside two different directories. I have require at the top of my first file with the name of the second file inside the quotes after the require. It is telling me that it can't load such file. Does that mean because its in different directory it can't find it? I tried sticking in the full path to the second file but it still can't load the file. Does anyone know how I can load the second file into the first?

Thanks in advance

require will search for files in only a set of locations referred to as the "Load Path." You can view the load path by using the global variable $LOAD_PATH in a script or irb session. If it is not in the load path, it won't find it.

Ruby 1.9 introduced require_relative which searches using the current file's location as a starting point.

# Will search $LOAD_PATH for file. 
require 'test/unit'
# Notice the '/' which tells it to look in the 
# 'test' folder for a file named 'unit.rb'

# Will look in current folder of file
require_relative 'my_folder/my_file'
# Will search in 'my_folder' for the file 'my_file.rb'

Note that require_relative will not work in irb.

Also note, that if you really want to use require, you can start your script by adding a location to the $LOAD_PATH variable.

$LOAD_PATH << File.join('users', 'yourusername', 'your_folder')
# or
$LOAD_PATH << File.dirname(__FILE__)
# The second one enables you to move the file around on your
# system and still operate correctly
require 'my_file'

Here's some additional documentation from Ruby-Doc:

From the docs: It suggests to use require relative. Docs

require_relative complements the builtin method require by allowing you to load a file that is relative to the file containing the require_relative statement.

When you use require to load a file, you are usually accessing functionality that has been properly installed, and made accessible, in your system. require does not offer a good solution for loading files within the project’s code. This may be useful during a development phase, for accessing test data, or even for accessing files that are "locked" away inside a project, not intended for outside use.

For example, if you have unit test classes in the "test" directory, and data for them under the test "test/data" directory, then you might use a line like this in a test case: