Ruby separate large source files into multiple files

Question

I am writing a Ruby script which was supposed to be a small thing but has grown quite large, way to large to have everything crammed into one source file. So I am trying to separate the project into different files. I have four classes and I want to put each in its own separate source file.

What I did:

I moved all of the classes into their own files so now I have this

proj/GoogleChart.rb
proj/BarChart.rb
proj/PieChart.rb
proj/GroupedBarChart.rb

Now that they are in other files I am getting uninitialized constant GoogleChart (NameError) in all of my subclasses on the line where I inherit from GoogleChart, i.e.

require 'GoogleChart'
BarChart < GoogleChart

Can anyone tell me what is wrong?

Thanks

EDIT

Using ruby version 1.8.4

Also I have tried using the absolute path:

require 'C:/Documents and Settings/proj/GoogleChart.rb' and this is still producing a NameError

Answer 1

In Ruby 1.8.x, the . is part of your load path. So you should at least try to debug that by including something like:

puts $:
require 'GoogleChart'
class BarChart < GoogleChart
end

and load that in an IRB session:

1. Open the session in your directory proj.
2. Enter there require 'BarChart'
3. Look at the result.

For me it is:

c:\apps\ruby\test\proj>irb
irb(main):001:0> require 'BarChart'
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i386-msvcrt
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/site_ruby
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/i386-msvcrt
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/1.8
C:/Users/mliebelt/.pik/rubies/Ruby-187-p334/lib/ruby/1.8/i386-mingw32
.
=> true

So the require is successful for me, and the . is part of the path (as it should). As you can see, I am working with Ruby 1.8.7, I don't know if anything has changed since 1.8.4 that is relevant here.

So please describe exactly how you run your file:

• Have you opened a shell to run the file?
• What is the current working directory of that shell?
• Do you run by double-clicking it?

It only works when you are in your proj directory and run there (with ruby in your shell path) ruby BarChart.rb.