Issue #15330 has been updated by ioquatix (Samuel Williams). Assignee changed from matz (Yukihiro Matsumoto) to ioquatix (Samuel Williams) https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/16148 ---------------------------------------- Feature #15330: autoload_relative https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/15330#change-116380 * Author: marcandre (Marc-Andre Lafortune) * Status: Assigned * Assignee: ioquatix (Samuel Williams) ---------------------------------------- I'd like to propose a way to autoload a constant using a relative path. It could look like: ``` autoload_relative :MyConst, 'models/my_const' ``` My proposal raises two questions: 1) what's the future of `autoload`? I believe that `autoload` has been there for years, it is used successfully and has no real alternative. I looked at a sample of 430 top gems (took the 500 top ranked according to Libraries.io, removed those that I failed to process). The number of those gems that appear to use `autoload` at least once is 94 of those (22%). The number of lines in the code where `autoload` is called can be quite big. The top 5 are: vagrant: 235 yard: 206 ffaker: 155 aws-sdk: 152 rdoc: 92 This is a minimum bound, as some gems might be using loops, my processing would only detect the one place in the code with `autoload`. 2) are many autoladed paths relative? My preliminary numbers indicate that of the 94 gems using autoload, at least 75 are autoloading some relative files. That's a lower bound, as my algorithm is pretty crude and will only count the simplest cases as being relative. An example of gem my algorithm does not detect is `yard`, because the author wrote a small method to map the relative paths to global paths (code here: https://github.com/lsegal/yard/blob/master/lib/yard/autoload.rb#L3 ) Of those where my processing detects the relative requires, a vast majority are relative. The average is that 94% of autoloaded files are relative and would benefit from `require_relative` In summary: I am convinced that `autoload` should remain in Ruby indefinitely. `autoload_relative` would actually be more useful than `autoload`. Even if the future of `autoload` remains uncertain, I would recommend adding `autoload_relative`; if it is ever decided to actually remove `autoload`, removing `autoload_relative` would not really add to the (huge) burden of gem maintainers. -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/