ApplicationController and Helpers are not being reloaded in Dev Env

[ghost]

why is the application_controller cached? and how can i disable this?

cheers

[groe]

What exactly is the problem; what do you mean? And how is (caching of) your ApplicationController related to ActiveAdmin?

[ghost]

why its closed?

if i make a change in the application_controller (for example an http_auth for the admin namespace) and i change there something, i have to restart the server. same effect with helpers. they got cache and for each change i have to restart the server

[elia]

@pcreux I'm having the same problem (v0.4.3)

[pcreux]

@fu-media It was closed because you didn't give any details. :)

[pcreux]

Could you guys give a try to v0.4.4 with the latest version of inherited resources. This bug might come from inherited resources.

[ghost]

what details you want to have?

i ask why its cached. so i have to restart the server always if i change helpers or application_controller, to take effect in active_admin

its not reloaded on each request

[elia]

@pcreux I switched to head and application_controller remains cached, I'll try a bundle update inherited_resources and tell you what happens :)

[latortuga]

I've been on 1.3.1 of InheritedResources (the latest) for quite awhile and have had this problem ever since forever. It's kind of annoying, especially since my CanCan current_ability method is inside the application controller. I think the helpers not being reloaded is a side-effect of the controller not being reloaded because helpers are all loaded from the application controller.

I'm on AA 0.4.3, Rails 3.2.2, Ruby 1.9.3-p194 (latest I'm aware of).

[elia]

@pcreux me too, on head activeadmin and latest inherited_resources I get cached application_controller methods

[pcreux]

@gregbell was saying that the latest version of Inherited Resources would fix this issue in #342. Looks like he was wrong. :)

[pcreux]

@fu-media I don't know why it's cached.

[jpmckinney]

Experiencing this as well.

[ddidier]

+1

[seanlinsley]

Curiously, helpers will reload if you manually define them

ActiveAdmin.register Blah do
  controller { helper BlahHelper }
end

[seanlinsley]

Well this is interesting:

div method(:helpers).source_location      # ...gems/arbre-1.0.1/lib/arbre/element.rb21
div method(:helpers).owner                # Arbre::Element
div helpers.method(:blah).source_location # ...app/helpers/blah_helper.rb12
div helpers.method(:blah).owner           # BlahHelper

div "#{blah} -> #{helpers.blah}"          # 1 -> 1

So it's likely that Arbre won't let go of the previously loaded helpers.

[seanlinsley]

Okay, so maybe not. Here's an experiment strictly from rails console:

app_1 = ApplicationController.object_id
derived_1 = UsersController.ancestors.detect {|a| a.to_s =~ /Appli/}.object_id
derived_1 == app_1 # => true

reload!

app_2 = ApplicationController.object_id
derived_2 = UsersController.ancestors.detect {|a| a.to_s =~ /Appli/}.object_id

derived_2 == app_2     # => false
derived_2 == derived_1 # => true

ObjectSpace._id2ref(app_1) # => ApplicationController # Shouldn't exist!!

ObjectSpace._id2ref(app_2) # => ApplicationController 

It's odd that the old ApplicationController still exists... I thought it would be entirely removed from memory.

To illustrate the same thing from the browser:

# 1 changes on file edit, 3 changes on every load, 2 & 4 never change
div controller.class.object_id
div controller.class.ancestors.detect {|a| a.to_s =~ /Appli/}.object_id
div helpers.object_id
div helpers.blah.object_id

[jpmckinney]

Still an issue in 0.6.0

[seanlinsley]

It's possible that #1935 will fix this, though I haven't checked.

[exAspArk]

To update your helpers automatically, you can temporary hack it like:

Dir["#{ Rails.root }/app/helpers/*.rb"].each { |file| require file }

[a-chernykh]

Just wanted to mention that it's still an issue. ApplicationController is not being reloaded when activeadmin is used (tested with dummy Rails 4.0.2 app with activeadmin in Gemfile).

>> ActiveAdmin::Devise::SessionsController.ancestors.find { |a| a.name =~ /Appl/ }.object_id == ApplicationController.object_id
=> true
>> reload!
Reloading...
=> true
>> ActiveAdmin::Devise::SessionsController.ancestors.find { |a| a.name =~ /Appl/ }.object_id == ApplicationController.object_id
=> false # now we have 2 different ApplicationController-s

But after reloading:

>> Devise::SessionsController.ancestors.find { |a| a.name =~ /Appl/ }.object_id == ApplicationController.object_id
=> true

[seanlinsley]

The solution probably lies deep in Rails' autoloading code :octocat:

[krukgit]

Still a problem in 1.0.0.pre1

[chancancode]

If someone can make a barebone app on github and provide the steps (manual is fine, doesn't need to be automated) to reproduce it, I can probably take a look!

[timoschilling]

@chancancode here is a test app to reproduce this bug: https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin_helper_reload_bug Take a look on the readme But it should be happen in every activeadmin app too.

[damienh]

1+ on this.

[jvaill]

I took a stab at fixing this! PR is linked just above. :smile:

[timoschilling]

Some notes from @jvaill from #3927:

Just quickly brainstorming, off the top of my head I can think of a few other feasible solutions:

1. Add the entire lib/ directory to ActiveSupport::Dependencies.autoload_paths and let Rails handle autoloading and reloading. This has the disadvantage of unloading all files inside of lib/ on each request.
2. Move the controllers to a lib/controllers/ directory and add that to ActiveSupport::Dependencies.autoload_paths.
3. See if we can use ActiveSupport::Dependencies.explicitly_unloadable_constants to get Rails to explicitly unload the controllers after each request.
4. ? :smile:

If we'd rather not shuffle files around, then looking into the third option might be worth it.

[timoschilling]

@chancancode can you take a look on this problem with the test app? https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin_helper_reload_bug Take a look on the readme But it should be happen in every activeadmin app too.

[lakim]

There is a very interesting rails issue on how the controllers are supposed to be loaded in gems like AA: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/12195

[seanlinsley]

Disconnecting this from the Rails reloading, I can reproduce by simply calling ActiveAdmin.unload!

ObjectSpace.each_object(ActiveAdmin::Resource).count => 17

ActiveAdmin.unload!

ObjectSpace.each_object(ActiveAdmin::Resource).count => 17
ids = ObjectSpace.each_object(ActiveAdmin::Resource).map{ |r| r.controller.object_id }
ids.count                                            => 17

GC.start

ObjectSpace.each_object(ActiveAdmin::Resource).count => 0
ids.count{ |id| ObjectSpace._id2ref id rescue nil }  => 17
ActiveAdmin::BaseController.descendants.count        => 22

ObjectSpace._id2ref(ids.first).name.constantize
-> NameError: uninitialized constant Admin::UsersController

Unload currently does a lot of work to remove the objects from memory, but there must be a reference to the controller somewhere that's not being removed. If only Ruby made it easy to see the references keeping an object in memory...