Path constants set incorrectly when using rake from another directory

[nragaz]

With Jammit 0.5.3, Rails 3, Bundler 1.0, and Ruby 1.9.2, doing something like this:

rake -f /my/rails/app/Rakefile task:name

from a directory that is not the Rails root will cause Jammit to throw an exception - it will look for a config file relative to the current directory, rather than relative to the Rails root.

I've pondered the source and can't figure out how to resolve this - somehow the ASSET_ROOT constant is being defined before the Rails constant is defined during loading. Adding Rails as a dependency doesn't help - I think somehow Jammit's loading needs to be done in the Railtie initialization block?

[jashkenas]

You can solve it by passing -c or --config to the jammit command, and specifying the path to your assets.yml. config/assets.yml is just the default location.

If you're calling Jammit from the ruby side, you can pass :config_path as an option.

[nragaz]

Thanks!

[nragaz]

On thinking this over and reading it more carefully - I don't think that actually resolves the issue.

The issue arises if you're calling an unrelated Rake task, like db:migrate, from another directory, then if you have the jammit gem enabled in your app you'll get an exception and won't be able to run the Rake task.

From what I can see in jammit.rb, there is an attempt made to identify if Rails is defined and then set the ASSET_ROOT accordingly - but that isn't working properly if the current directory is not the root of your app. I presume because Bundler is loading jammit.rb before Rails...

(On the other hand, I was able to resolve this by using cd /path/to/my/app && rake my:task as needed. And my server is 100x more zippy now that Jammit is compressing and statically gzipping my assets. So Jammit FTW.)

[jashkenas]

Thanks for the details. Re-opening the ticket.

[jashkenas]

nragaz: What happens if you set the RAILS_ROOT environment variable from the command-line, before trying to use Jammit from a different directory?

[nragaz]

Same error.

[jashkenas]

So, if Rails.root is truly not defined -- then what heuristic do you think we should be using to detect it?

[nragaz]

My suggestion would be:

a) If no Jammit configuration path or Rails.root is present, do nothing (don't raise an exception); b) If Rails.root becomes available later in the load process, access it then.

I don't know if this is possible - but given that the Rake tasks don't involve assets at all, I hope that it would be possible to delay loading of the config file.

[jashkenas]

nragaz: because I can't reproduce this here -- what's the exact exception + stacktrace that you're seeing?

[nragaz]

    Ada:nragaz nragaz$ RAILS_ROOT=/Users/shared/gh/nragaz/hms-reports rake -f /Users/shared/gh/nragaz/hms-reports/Rakefile log:clear --trace
(in /Users/Shared/gh/nragaz)
rake aborted!
could not find the "/Users/Shared/gh/nragaz/config/assets.yml" configuration file
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/jammit-0.5.3/lib/jammit.rb:63:in `load_configuration'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/jammit-0.5.3/lib/jammit/dependencies.rb:15:in `<top (required)>'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `block in require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `block in load_dependency'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:596:in `new_constants_in'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `load_dependency'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bundler/gems/rails-e6772750682a/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/jammit-0.5.3/lib/jammit.rb:185:in `<top (required)>'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:64:in `require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:64:in `block (2 levels) in require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:62:in `each'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:62:in `block in require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:51:in `each'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler/runtime.rb:51:in `require'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@global/gems/bundler-1.0.0/lib/bundler.rb:112:in `require'
/Users/Shared/gh/nragaz/hms-reports/config/application.rb:3:in `<top (required)>'
<internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
<internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
/Users/Shared/gh/nragaz/hms-reports/Rakefile:1:in `<top (required)>'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2383:in `load'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2383:in `raw_load_rakefile'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2017:in `block in load_rakefile'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exception_handling'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2016:in `load_rakefile'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2000:in `block in run'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:2068:in `standard_exception_handling'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/lib/rake.rb:1998:in `run'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/gems/rake-0.8.7/bin/rake:31:in `<top (required)>'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bin/rake:19:in `load'
/Users/nragaz/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0@hms-apps/bin/rake:19:in `<main>'

[jashkenas]

I've pushed a commit to master that should help with this:

http://github.com/documentcloud/jammit/commit/cb85c4867966f9004c28b0edc9a969ebf9c2d3f7

Give that a try, and let me know if it works for you.

[nragaz]

I'll try it once Github's git:// is back up.

[nragaz]

That works great. (edit: with and without setting RAILS_ROOT in the command)