What does 'require: false' in Gemfile mean?

ruby bundler gemfile
rafamvc picture rafamvc · Jan 26, 2011 · Viewed 72.5k times · Source

Does this: 

gem 'whenever', require: false

mean that the gem needs to be installed, or does it mean it is not required?

Answer

Rob Di Marco picture Rob Di Marco · Jan 26, 2011

This means install the gem, but do not call require when you start Bundler. So you will need to manually call

require "whenever"

if you want to use the library.

If you were to do

gem "whenever", require: "whereever"

then bundler would download the gem named whenever, but would call

require "whereever"

This is often used if the name of library to require is different than the name of the gem.

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