Ruby monkeypatching is a dangerous, but necessary tool. It is convenient to add new behaviours to existing classes, or to replace existing methods with more customized or secure code. Once the patch is in place, however, it is easy to forget that it is there.
Recently, I was trying to discern the origin of such a patch, and discovered a new (to me) function in pry, my favourite Ruby debugger: show-source.
- Put a
binding prybelow the monkeypatch so that it can be caught at boot time - Use
cdto change directories into the reopened class - Use
show-sourceto find the exact location where the method was originally defined - Use
show-source -ato show the source and location of EVERY MONKEYPATCH
In action:
1. Debug your code at boot time
2. Reopen the class
3. Use ‘show-source’
4. Use ‘show-source -a’
