ruby on rails - What is '$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)' doing?

Question

What is the following doing, and why is it at the top of the page?

$:.unshift File.dirname(__FILE__)

https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll/blob/master/lib/jekyll.rb

Answer 1

It's adding the current file's directory to the load path. $: represents the load path (which is an array) and unshift prepends to the beginning of the array.

The reason it's there (and at the top) is so that all those requires needn't worry about the path.