On 17 Aug 2010, at 16:36, Brian Candler wrote:

> Iain Barnett wrote:
>> Do all gems become available to irb so they can be loaded using relative 
>> paths even when the library itself has not been required?
> 
> In ruby 1.9, rubygems is activated automatically - you don't need 
> require 'rubygems'
> 
> There isn't really any such thing as "requiring the library itself". A ibrary is just a collection of .rb files. So if 
> .../gems/foo-1.2.3/lib/bar/baz.rb exists, then require "bar/baz" will ind it, unless it finds another one earlier in the path.
> 
> So I think the mystery is solved :-)
> 
> For development purposes, you could do
> 
>    irb -I.
> 
> to put the current directory at the front of the search path - or the quivalent in .irbrc
> -- 
> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
> 


I see, that makes sense. I assumed that since I was giving a path to load that it wouldn't search through the $: paths.

Thanks for your help.

Regards,