Rails 4 asset pipeline doesn't overwrite assets with asset_path references to other assets

Question

So we have a small problem with asset pipeline digests in that we have a number of HTML templates as assets (for AngularJS) and we references the paths for these assets in a Javascript file with the asset_path helper. Unfortunately because of how the asset precompile step (and Heroku) check for changes, making changes to a template does not cause the javascript file to be recompiled.

So basically in a file like application.coffee.erb we might have something like:

url = '<%= asset_path('views/template.html') %>'

And when we run rake assets:precompile that will get turned into /assets/views/template-1023911231.html which has a digest value but if template.html.slim is changed the digest will change but since application.coffee.erb has not fundamentally changed it isn't recompiled and continues to point to the old digest.

Thoughts? Solutions? This seems like a bug to me actually.

Update

Currently the best solution I have is to update the asset version in application.rb if we need to change our HTML template assets but none of the javascript has changed.

Answer 1

A solution was suggested here which involves using the depend_on or depend_on_asset directive. In my case adding this to the .js.erb file works:

//= depend_on_asset views/template.html

url = '<%= asset_path('views/template.html') %>'

This will recompile this file any time there is a change to views/template.html as desired.

Answer 2

Have you tried running rake assets:clean then rake assets:precompile to recompile?

UPDATE Not sure if this is the same issue you are facing but it does sound similar. Take a look at this Heroku issue on github.

If it is the same (or similar), Schneems mentions it takes 3 changes to an asset file for sprockets to clear out the files.

The recommended steps is to run the following 4 times and compare output:

echo "body {background-color: red}">> app/assets/stylesheets/application.css
git add .; git commit -m "assets changed 1"
git push heroku master
heroku run ls public/assets | awk /application/

It's probably best you modify the above to suit your situation.