mod_ruby and include statements (mixins)

[Matthew Thill]

Perhaps someone can explain this behaviour to me.

This is on an OpenBSD system. Ruby 1.8.2 and mod_ruby 1.2.4 installed
successfully. Apache runs in a chroot environment. To avoid starting
Apache with the -u flag (to turn chroot off) I copied the ruby
installation into the chroot environment (/var/www) so things would
work. Things do work as expected, except for this bit of strange
behaviour. Any insight anyone can offer would be appreciated.

I have replicated the problem with a few small files.

The first file, call it ruby1.rb, is created and I run it from the
shell, using the command "ruby ruby1.rb".

*********** Start ruby1.rb *******************
module M
def some_method
end
end

class T
include M

def T.main
puts methods.include?('some_method').to_s
end
def main
puts methods.include?('some_method').to_s
end
end
T.main
t = T.new
t.main
include M
puts methods.include?('some_method').to_s
*********** End ruby1.rb *******************

The output is as expected:
false
true
true

If I put this file somewhere Apache can see it and run it through
mod_ruby, I get an internal server error. In Apache's error log I see this:
`append_features': cyclic include detected (ArgumentError)

So, mod_ruby is doing something weird with include statements (read: I
don't understand what it's doing).

To work around this, I put the module M definition into a file (call it
m.rb).

************* Start m.rb *******************
module M
def some_method
end
end
************ End m.rb **********************

The code put in m.rb is removed from ruby1.rb (the first 4 lines), and
is replaced with "load {path/to/m.rb}".

I then run ruby1.rb through Apache and mod_ruby again, and receive this
output (I put the linefeeds in to make it easier to read):
false
true
false

The first two are as expected, but the last "false" is not expected.
Apparently, with mod_ruby, only a class can include (or mix-in) a
module. When I try to include a module in a script and run it through
mod_ruby, the methods defined in the module are not available. I can
only access the methods from the module if I have a class include the
module.

A posibly related issue is the cyclic include error. I would appear as
though defining a module in the same file as a class results in the
module being "automatically" included. To test this, I put ruby1.rb in
its original form back and removed the "include M" statement. This did
fix the cyclic include error, but the module methods were still not
available and the output was:
false
true
false

Can anyone provide me with an explanation for this behaviour? Is this
just the way mod_ruby works? Should it work this way? I would think a
script that runs in the shell environment should work exactly the same
in the mod_ruby environment. Or is all this related to the chroot
environment, and if so, why?