Bug #13695: Issue with require and require_relative with symlinked directories

• Status: Closed
• Assignee: -
• Target version: -
• ruby -v: ruby 2.4.1p111 (2017-03-22 revision 58053) [x86_64-darwin16]
• Backport: 2.2: UNKNOWN, 2.3: UNKNOWN, 2.4: UNKNOWN

[fidothe (Matt Patterson)]

Symlinked directories cause an issue with require_relative where libraries loaded from a symlinked path (e.g. in a typical Capistrano / Bundler deployment) can be double-loaded.

Reproduce process:

1. Clone git repo from https://github.com/fidothe/symlink-require
2. Run use-symlink.rb script:

$ ruby use-symlink.rb

Expected result: No warning from double-loading of constants issued.
Actual result: double-loading of file causing already-initialised constant warning.

In the example I linked above, target.rb uses require_relative to load dependent.rb.

When the example also requires dependent.rb the file is double-loaded and we see a warning about already-initialized constant.

The problem is that when require in use-symlink.rb (line 7) checks the set of loaded files it uses an absolute path containing the symlink (since that is what was added to $LOAD_PATH), but when require_relative in target.rb is called, it uses an absolute path containing target of the symlink, causing the double-load.

Is this discrepancy intended behaviour on Ruby's part?

[rrosenblum (Ryan Rosenblum)]

rspec-duplicate-require shows that this behavior has been around for at least 4 years. More recent discussions of this have been going on in prawn and pdf-core.

[shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe)]

I guess this is a dup of #10222.

[fidothe (Matt Patterson)]

shyouhei (Shyouhei Urabe) wrote:

I guess this is a dup of #10222.

It is, sorry for not finding that when I looked for existing issues related to this.

[jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans)]

• Is duplicate of Bug #10222: require_relative and require should be compatible with each other when symlinks are used added

[jeremyevans0 (Jeremy Evans)]

• Status changed from Open to Closed