executing spring outside RAILS_ROOT results in NoMethodError

[senny]

When calling spring outside the RAILS_ROOT directory I get the following error:

/Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/gems/spring-0.0.2/lib/spring.rb:66:in `ensure in run': undefined method `close' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
    from /Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/gems/spring-0.0.2/lib/spring.rb:66:in `run'
    from /Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/gems/spring-0.0.2/lib/spring.rb:19:in `run'
    from /Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/gems/spring-0.0.2/bin/spring:5:in `<top (required)>'
    from /Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/bin/spring:19:in `load'
    from /Users/senny/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194@equis/bin/spring:19:in `<main>'

This happens for subdirectories of your rails application as well as directories outside a rails app.

[jonleighton]

I think we should traverse up the directory tree until we find a Gemfile.

[senny]

I think that's a good idea. We would then:

1. run up the directory tree until we find a Gemfile
2. detect the application type from that directory (rails app | engine | unknown => error)

[jonleighton]

I'm not sure how we'd detect if it's a rails app specifically?

[senny]

we could look for config/boot.rb. For an engine we could peek inside lib/<root_dir_name>/engine.rb this is would be very brittle tough.

[jonleighton]

Yeah, seems quite brittle. Let's do this:

• Traverse up to the Gemfile
• Look for config/application.rb
• If it doesn't exist, look for test/dummy/config/application.rb ("test/dummy" is what the generator creates in all cases, so seems reasonable to hardcode it)
• Otherwise show an error saying that we couldn't find config/application.rb

Sound ok?

[senny]

I don't like the idea to hardcode test/dummy. We use spec/dummy in our engines.

[senny]

There is even a generator option to supply a path where to generate the dummy app.

[jonleighton]

Ah good point. What do you think about linking config/application.rb to ../spec/dummy/config/application.rb? Do you reckon that's better/worse than having to create a config/spring.rb with some config pointing to the app root?

[senny]

I'm fine either way. We could think about adding something to rails to make it possible to detect engines or more specifically to reach the dummy application. If the symlink must be created manually I would favor the configuration option in config/spring.rb. In my opinion this would be a more reasonable place to look for specific stuff.

[jonleighton]

Yeah I'm coming back around to the config option. Let's merge your patch then.