files in the app directory are not being watched

[barelyknown]

Spring is restarting when I edit some files (like config/application.rb) but none that are in the app/ directory. See below. Any idea why?

barelyknown:buytruckload seandevine$ bin/spring status
Spring is running:

91999 spring server | buytruckload | started 1 min ago   
92042 spring app    | buytruckload | started 40 secs ago | development mode 

barelyknown:buytruckload seandevine$ touch config/application.rb

barelyknown:buytruckload seandevine$ bin/spring status
Spring is running:

91999 spring server | buytruckload | started 1 min ago   
92068 spring app    | buytruckload | started 1 sec ago | development mode

barelyknown:buytruckload seandevine$ touch app/views/loads/new.html.erb

barelyknown:buytruckload seandevine$ bin/spring status 
Spring is running:

91999 spring server | buytruckload | started 2 mins ago   
92068 spring app    | buytruckload | started 50 secs ago | development mode  

[aaronjensen]

I believe that is by design. As long as you have config.cache_classes = false then Rails itself will pick up on this change. There's no reason for spring to.

[rwjblue]

@aaronjensen, exactly!

Restarting rails is a really expensive operation (hence the need for spring to begin with). In a standard rails setup config.cache_classes is disabled in development (and spring manually disables it in test). This allows rails to automatically reload any added/changed files in the various default 'app/' subdirectories.

[jonleighton]

As explained above, spring doesn't need to restart if you've only edited autoloaded files. Changes should still be picked up.