From: trans <transfire@...>
Date: 2009-06-09T22:06:03+09:00
Subject: Re: require_all 1.0.0: A wonderfully simple way to load your code



On Jun 9, 5:21 am, Tony Arcieri <t...@medioh.com> wrote:
> require_all
>
> A wonderfully simple way to load your code.
>
> http://github.com/tarcieri/require_all/tree/master
>
> Tired of futzing around with require statements everywhere, littering your
> code with require File.dirname(__FILE__) crap? What if you could just point
> something at a big directory full of code and have everything just
> automagically load regardless of the dependency structure?
>
> Wouldn’t that be nice? Well, now you can!
> require 'require_all'
>
> You can now require_all in a multitude of different ways:
> require_all *args
>
> One of the easiest ways to require_all is to give it a glob, which will
> enumerate all the matching files and load them in the proper order. For
> example, to load all the Ruby files under the ‘lib’ directory, just do:
> require_all 'lib/**/*.rb'
>
> If the dependencies between the matched files are unresolvable, it will
> throw the first unresolvable NameError.
>
> Don’t want to give it a glob? Just give it a list of files:
> require_all Dir.glob("blah/**/*.rb").reject { |f| stupid_file(f) }
>
> Or if you want, just list the files directly as arguments:
> require_all 'lib/a.rb', 'lib/b.rb', 'lib/c.rb', 'lib/d.rb'
>
> It’s just that easy! Code loading shouldn’t be hard.
> Methodology
>
> I didn’t invent the approach this gem uses. It was shamelessly stolen from
> Merb. Once upon a time at MountainWest RubyConf we were discussing how
> horrible ActiveSupport’s dependencies.rb hijacking of const_missing and
> someone described the approach Merb used to me. It was so simple and clean!
> Here’s how it works:
>
>    1. Enumerate the files in the glob
>    2. Try to load all of the files. If we encounter a NameError loading a
>    particular file, store that file in a “try to load it later” list.
>    3. If all the files loaded, great, we’re done! If not, go through the
>    “try to load it later” list again rescuing NameErrors the same way.
>    4. If we walk the whole “try to load it later” list and it doesn’t shrink
>    at all, we’ve encountered an unresolvable dependency. In this case,
>    require_all will rethrow the first NameError it encountered.
>
> Questions? Comments? Concerns?
>
> You can reach the author on github or freenode: “tarcieri”
>
> Or by email: t...@medioh.com
>
> Got issues with require_all to report? Post ‘em here:
>
> Github Tracker <http://github.com/tarcieri/require_all/issues>
> License

  require 'facets/kernel/require_all'

The idea predates Merb. However, it's always good too see how
implementations may have improved over time.

Also, I have seen another definition of #require_all floating around
that simply loads every .rb file in a given directory. I wonder if
both conceptions of this function (glob loading and directory loading)
could be integrated into one. Eg.

  require_all 'some/path'

would do the same as

  require_all 'some/path/*.rb'

Cheers,
T.