Using backbone-rails with jasmine-webkit-headless

[krikis]

When I tried to run jasmine-webkit-headless it complained that it could not find the backbone/#{application_name} file.

couldn't find file 'backbone/application_name'

This refers to an entry in 'application.js' placed there to load the generated/scaffolded main backbone application file into the Rails assets pipeline:

//= require backbone/application_name

When this line is changed to

//= require ./backbone/application_name

the problem is solved. In other application.js files I saw relative paths being loaded using the leading dot-slash too.

Maybe you could adapt your generators/scaffolders to incorporate this minor change.

[ryanfitz]

when you load up the application as usual, outside of jasmine-webkit, do you get the same errors? Also what version of rails are you using?

[krikis]

I'm using rails 3.2. The issue only occurs when running jasmine tests.

Cheers

[krikis]

I took this from the Sprockets 2.1.2 source code:

  # The `require` directive functions similar to Ruby's own `require`.
  # It provides a way to declare a dependency on a file in your path
  # and ensures its only loaded once before the source file.
  #
  # `require` works with files in the environment path:
  #
  #     //= require "foo.js"
  #
  # Extensions are optional. If your source file is ".js", it
  # assumes you are requiring another ".js".
  #
  #     //= require "foo"
  #
  # Relative paths work too. Use a leading `./` to denote a relative
  # path:
  #
  #     //= require "./bar"
  #
  def process_require_directive(path)
    if @compat
      if path =~ /<([^>]+)>/
        path = $1
      else
        path = "./#{path}" unless relative?(path)
      end
    end

    context.require_asset(path)
  end

The comments instruct to use a leading "./" for relative paths. The code however prepends this "./" when the path is not relative. That seems to be why relative assets can be required even when the path is not defined as a relative path.

Apparently the jasmine-rails gem (https://github.com/searls/jasmine-rails) does not have this behavior and therefore cannot require the relative files.

This only applies when compatibility mode is enabled. Still the jasmine-rails' require_jasmine implementation does something awkwardly different to the sprockets require, which make loading relative assets fail.

[krikis]

Since this problem seems to be more related to the jasmine-rails gem, I decided to stop using it. Now everything works fine when compiling assets.