On Rails 4, causes rake assets:precompile incorrectly to attempt to initialize DB connection

[patrick-minton]

When using acts_as_taggable_on, rake assets:precompile will fail if there is no production database, because it tries to initialize the app, which it should not do (in rails 4 there is no longer a config.assets.initialize_on_precompile option):

|ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks| patricks-retina in ~/code/boxscoregeeks
± |master ✓| → RAILS_ENV=production rake assets:precompile
rake aborted!
FATAL:  database "doesntexist" does not exist
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:825:in `initialize'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:825:in `new'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:825:in `connect'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:542:in `initialize'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:41:in `new'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:41:in `postgresql_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:440:in `new_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:450:in `checkout_new_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:421:in `acquire_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:356:in `block in checkout'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:355:in `checkout'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:265:in `block in connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:264:in `connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:546:in `retrieve_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_handling.rb:79:in `retrieve_connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/connection_handling.rb:53:in `connection'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/activerecord-4.0.0/lib/active_record/model_schema.rb:203:in `table_exists?'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/acts-as-taggable-on-2.4.1/lib/acts_as_taggable_on/acts_as_taggable_on/cache.rb:5:in `included'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/acts-as-taggable-on-2.4.1/lib/acts_as_taggable_on/taggable.rb:98:in `include'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/acts-as-taggable-on-2.4.1/lib/acts_as_taggable_on/taggable.rb:98:in `taggable_on'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/acts-as-taggable-on-2.4.1/lib/acts_as_taggable_on/taggable.rb:39:in `acts_as_taggable_on'
/Users/patrick/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247@boxscoregeeks/gems/acts-as-taggable-on-2.4.1/lib/acts_as_taggable_on/taggable.rb:15:in `acts_as_taggable'

This is a big problem because currently pre-compiliing assets is the only reliable way to get them to work on Heroku.

[trappist]

There's a workaround, working for me until recently:

acts_as_taggable rescue nil

But that's no help if you're using something like activeadmin, which does the invocation without having the ability to control it like that.

[mdb]

I can confirm this issue. Any word on a fix or workaround would be much appreciated.

Thanks!

[trappist]

heroku labs:enable user-env-compile -a myapp is practically a fix on Heroku.

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/labs-user-env-compile

[mdb]

@trappist Thanks for the fast response. I did see Heroku's documentation surrounding user-env-compile -- and enabling it does address the issue -- though I'm a bit wary of relying on this workaround as Heroku cites it as counter to best practices.

[trappist]

I understand why they say that, but all it really does is force your Heroku instance to behave more like your local development instance, which does load your environment for tasks like assets:precompile. Heroku doesn't, probably because it saves time and (you're right) shouldn't be necessary. So, it's not a fix, but it's a very good workaround.

[patrick-minton]

Actually, no. I encountered that early on in debugging this. It did not work for me -- I suspect it wouldn't for @mdb either, unless he also had the rescue nil fix from @trappist's earlier post. This doesn't solve anything, because running this in your development environment will ALSO fail unless you have a production database setup in your database.yml:

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rake assets:precompile

(again, unless you have the rescue nil fix).

The "RAILS_ENV=production" is relevant and has a great deal of impact. Of course, whatever you have setup in database.yml for production is very unlikely to work from the Heroku servers.

Once again:

In Rails 4, the Rake task assets:precompile IS NOT SUPPOSED TO LOAD YOUR ENVIRONMENT, EVEN LOCALLY. The fact that it does so when using acts_as_taggable_on is definitely a BUG within acts_as_taggable_on. Something within the gem libraries is trying to initialize the application stack, when it shouldn't.

The reason this is a compatibility bug is because the config.assets.initialize_on_precompile option was removed in Rails 4 -- meaning that if a gem causes this, there is no way to turn it off.

[nishantmodak]

+1

[jonysy]

Is there a temporary fix for this??

[shekibobo]

Point your gem to the repo/branch for #403 and it should deploy just fine.

[jonysy]

Didn't seem to work... Using: https://github.com/shekibobo/acts-as-taggable-on

[shekibobo]

gem 'acts-as-taggable-on', github: 'shekibobo/acts-as-taggable-on', branch: 'fix-heroku-precompile'?

[jonysy]

Worked, thank you!

[shekibobo]

No problem.