Donv,
Re: Compiling ActiveSupport
Right now ActiveSupport cannot be precompiled due to a JRuby bug http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/JRUBY-3247.

Re: Uncompiled data directories
Rawr should only compile files listed under the various source directives. If your configuration has source files in a data directory and they are getting compiled (assuming the data dirs aren't in the source directives), then you have a bug. Please file the bug with your config file too.

Re: HOWTO
Rawr is just a build tool. It doesn't really include anything for runtime usage. I'd love to create a gem that Monkeybars, Jemini, and other apps can depend on for runtime helpers, but I'm maintaining 3 projects and feeling pretty overwhelmed (but I don't ever mind fielding questions and such). Because we needed some runtime detection at the time, we just added it to Monkeybars. There's no part of our runtime detection that's specific to Monkeybars, as the file is used to help load Monkeybars itself.

Here's the Monkeybars resolver.rb:
http://pastie.org/587893

Here's a pretty normal Monkeybars manifest.rb, which is required first-thing in a Monkeybars app:
http://pastie.org/587896

Neither of these should require Monkeybars itself. The manifest might need the require 'monkeybars' and the jar loading removed, but that should be it.

Pretty soon, I might be able to work on a runtime library, but it's hard to promise what I can make time for lately. I hope these will prove to be enough.

-Logan

Here's a directive in the build_configuration.rb:

c.jars[:data] = { :directory => 'data', :location_in_jar => 'data', :exclude => /bak/}

You may have a version just like this that's commented out.

They get copied into the main jar. See this declaration in the default Rawr build_configuration.rb: c.source_dirs = ['src', 'lib/ruby'] This treats both src and lib/ruby as Ruby source, and will attempt to compile them if compile_ruby_files is set to true. Due to a bug in JRuby with dashes in compiled Ruby source, you don't want to compile ActiveRecord/Support (it has some baked in gems with gem-version formatted directories). Here's the bug: http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/JRUBY-3247

I stored migrations in the jar as well. However, there are problems with getting to resources in jars with things like Dir[] and Dir.glob. There's lots of bugs filed for this and lots more on the way. While working with JRuby this has fluctuated quite a bit. I don't blame to JRuby team because I've tried fixing it myself and it's usually very painful. The best thing to do for now is see if we can file bugs or comment on existing bugs to 'vote' them up.