Why isn’t current directory on my Ruby path? [duplicate]

In Ruby 1.9.2 the Powers that Be introduced an explicit change so that the working directory is no longer in the Ruby path. I thought it was the Apocalypse and a terrible thing, until I learned about require_relative. My apps tend to look like this:

require 'some_gem'
require 'another_gem'
require_relative 'lib/init'

And then lib/init.rb can have:

require_relative 'lib1' # this is lib/lib1.rb
require_relative 'lib2' # this is lib/lib2.rb

It’s the bees knees, and solves all sorts of problems I used to have with requiring the same file from different working directories.

Edit: Unfortunately (for reasons I don’t know and haven’t looked into) require_relative doesn’t work specifically in irb. For this you can:

1. do what you initially described: either $: << '.' or $:.unshift '.', or

2. you can use load 'myfile.rb' or require './myfile' instead:

   irb(main):001:0> Dir['*.rb']
   => ["a.rb", "bar.rb", "foo.rb", "prime.rb", "tmp.rb"]
   
   irb(main):002:0> require 'a'
   LoadError: no such file to load -- a
     from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
     from <internal:lib/rubygems/custom_require>:29:in `require'
     from (irb):2
     from /usr/local/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
   
   irb(main):003:0> require_relative 'a'
   LoadError: cannot infer basepath
     from (irb):3:in `require_relative'
     from (irb):3
     from /usr/local/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
   
   irb(main):004:0> load 'a.rb'
   a
   => true
   
   irb(main):005:0> require './a'
   a
   => true