How do I keep static assets from a bundled gem in-sync in my Rails 2.3 app?

Question

I am working on a Rails 2.3 application and would like to refactor some of my static assets (JS, CSS) into a separate gem. The problem is that Rails 2.3 engines don't have the support for public directories that Rails 3 engines do, so the only way to access these files from the app is to copy them over.

One thought I had was to use some sort of "afterBundle" hook of some sort that I could use to automatically copy the assets after "bundle install" completes. I took a look at Bundler's documentation and source and didn't find anything like what I'm thinking. How have others solved this problem?

Answer 1

One issue in using Bundler is that there are now two install paths for you gem, gem install and bundle install . Even if you do hack a Bundler post install action to Bundler it won't run if some one does gem install . One solution is to make the gemspec relatively empty, example:

https://github.com/hedgehog/fog/blob/bundler/fog.gemspec

Then simulate a post install hook for gem install , which in fact invokes bundle install :

https://github.com/hedgehog/fog/commit/32878aaa9ef1fd3add148039fecd6e4059873d5d

With this work around you can add your post install actions after bundle install is run.

However, by adding the post install steps to gem install you have re-introduced the opening problem - two different install paths, just that now gem install does more (the post install steps) than bundle install does.

See also: http://blog.costan.us/2008/11/post-install-post-update-scripts-for.html