Module + Constant Issue

Rails
1

I ran into the following problem in my application when I went from my
dev environment to my staging environment. Modules and classes that
were previously autoloaded just fine in dev ended up with a strange
error in staging:

NameError: uninitialized constant Rails::Initializer::…

Weird.

Well, I managed to reproduce it, and here is the procedure. I’m
wondering if the approach I’m using to setup environment-specific
values for these constants is the culprit, and maybe there’s a better
way. Or maybe this is some sort of wacky bug? Anyway, here’s the
procedure. Let me know what you think.

—>8— cut here —>8—

  1. Create a new Rails app, e. g. $ rails constant

  2. Edit the environment.rb file to add your own module with
    configuration constant default values with the idea you could
    “override” these by specifying them in the specific environment file:

At the end of config/environment.rb, add:

module AppConstants
IMPORTANT_VALUE = “x” unless defined?(AppConstants::IMPORTANT_VALUE)
end

  1. Create a Ruby module in the file lib/app_constants/list.rb, noting
    the “top level” name of the module matches the one specified in the
    environment file:

module AppConstants
module List
LIST_CONSTANT = “list_constant”
end
end

  1. Fire up the console and probe the constant values:

Loading development environment.

AppConstants::List::LIST_CONSTANT
=> “list_constant”

AppConstants::IMPORTANT_VALUE
=> “x”

  1. Quit from the console and add development-specific value for the
    constant defined in the environment file:

At the end of config/environments/development.rb, add:

module AppConstants
IMPORTANT_VALUE = “definitely_not_x”
end

  1. Fire up the console again and probe the constant values:

Loading development environment.

AppConstants::List::LIST_CONSTANT
NameError: uninitialized constant
Rails::Initializer::AppConstants::List
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/
active_support/dependencies.rb:263:in load_missing_constant' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:452:inconst_missing’
from (irb):1

AppConstants::IMPORTANT_VALUE
=> “definitely_not_x”

AppConstants::List::LIST_CONSTANT
NameError: uninitialized constant
Rails::Initializer::AppConstants::List
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/
active_support/dependencies.rb:263:in load_missing_constant' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/activesupport-1.4.2/lib/ active_support/dependencies.rb:452:inconst_missing’
from (irb):3