🎭 AnonymousLoader

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if ci_badges.map(&:color).all? { it == "green"} 👇️ send money so I can do more of this. FLOSS maintenance is now my full-time job.

_{Corporate sponsors: Become a sponsor}

👣 How will this project approach the September 2025 hostile takeover of RubyGems? 🚑️

I've summarized my thoughts in this blog post.

🌻 Synopsis

AnonymousLoader evaluates Ruby source files inside fresh anonymous modules. It is useful when a tool needs to inspect or reuse code that declares constants whose top-level names may collide with the host process.

The loaded source keeps its normal constant nesting, but that nesting starts inside the returned anonymous namespace. For example, source that declares Auth::Sanitizer becomes namespace::Auth::Sanitizer, and does not create Object::Auth.

AnonymousLoader can load explicitly named files, or resolve a file using RubyGems metadata with a $LOAD_PATH fallback. The fallback is intended for Bundler standalone and similar environments where code is loadable but a gem is not visible through Gem.loaded_specs or the normal RubyGems index.

💡 Info you can shake a stick at

Tokens to Remember
Works with JRuby
Works with Truffle Ruby
Works with MRI Ruby 4
Works with MRI Ruby 3
Works with MRI Ruby 2
Support & Community
Source
Documentation
Compliance
Style
Maintainer 🎖️
... 💖	🧊 🐙 🛖 🧪

Compatibility

Compatible with MRI Ruby 2.2.0+, JRuby, and TruffleRuby. CI workflows and Appraisals are generated for MRI Ruby 2.4+. The current MRI CI lane runs on Linux and macOS. This test floor is configured by ruby.test_minimum in .kettle-jem.yml and may be higher than the gem's runtime compatibility floor when legacy Rubies are not practical for the current toolchain.

The amazing test matrix is powered by the kettle-dev stack.

How kettle-dev manages complexity in tests

Gem	Source	Role	Total downloads
appraisal2	GitHub	multi-dependency Appraisal matrix generation
appraisal2-rubocop	GitHub	RuboCop Appraisal generator integration
kettle-dev	GitHub	development, release, and CI workflow tooling
kettle-jem	GitHub	Appraisals & CI workflow templates
kettle-soup-cover	GitHub	SimpleCov coverage policy and reporting
kettle-test	GitHub	standard test runner and coverage harness
rubocop-lts	GitHub	Ruby-version-aware linting
turbo_tests2	GitHub	parallel test execution

Federated DVCS

Find this repo on federated forges (Coming soon!)

Federated DVCS Repository	Status	Issues	PRs	Wiki	CI
🧪 ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader on GitLab	The Truth	💚	💚	💚	🐭 Tiny Matrix
🧊 ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader on CodeBerg	An Ethical Mirror (Donate)	💚	💚	➖	⭕️ No Matrix
🐙 ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader on GitHub	Another Mirror	💚	💚	💚	💯 Full Matrix

Enterprise Support

For enterprise support from the maintainer, use Upwork or CodeMentor.

Other support channels:

• 
• 

✨ Installation

Install the gem and add to the application's Gemfile by executing:

bundle add anonymous_loader

If bundler is not being used to manage dependencies, install the gem by executing:

gem install anonymous_loader

⚙️ Configuration

AnonymousLoader has no global configuration. Each call is configured with keyword arguments, so callers can choose the resolution strategy per load.

Resolution order:

1. path: loads an explicit file path.
2. gem_name: plus require_path: resolves through RubyGems metadata when the gem is loaded or installed.
3. require_path: falls back to $LOAD_PATH via RubyGems file discovery.

When using the $LOAD_PATH fallback with version_requirement:, pass version_file: so AnonymousLoader can validate the nearby library version before evaluating the target file. If a file is present but the discovered version is outside the requested range, AnonymousLoader::VersionMismatchError is raised. If no candidate can be resolved, AnonymousLoader::FileNotFoundError is raised.

🔧 Basic Usage

namespace = AnonymousLoader.load(files: "path/to/library.rb")
isolated = namespace.const_get(:Auth).const_get(:Sanitizer)

The source's natural nesting is preserved under the anonymous namespace. A file that declares Auth::Sanitizer becomes namespace::Auth::Sanitizer, while Object::Auth remains undefined.

Files can be resolved from RubyGems metadata or from $LOAD_PATH:

namespace = AnonymousLoader.load_path(
  gem_name: "auth-sanitizer",
  require_path: "auth_sanitizer/loader.rb",
  version_requirement: "~> 0.2",
  version_file: "auth/sanitizer/version.rb"
)

The $LOAD_PATH fallback supports Bundler standalone setups where a dependency is loadable but absent from Gem.loaded_specs and GEM_PATH.

🦷 FLOSS Funding

While ruby-oauth tools are free software and will always be, the project would benefit immensely from some funding. Raising a monthly budget of... "dollars" would make the project more sustainable.

We welcome both individual and corporate sponsors! We also offer a wide array of funding channels to account for your preferences. Currently, Open Collective is our preferred funding platform.

Corporate Sponsorship

• Alpha-Omega — backed by Amazon Web Services, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, OpenAI, Citi, GitHub
• SerpApi

If you're working in a company that's making significant use of ruby-oauth tools we'd appreciate it if you suggest to your company to become a ruby-oauth sponsor.

Individual Support

You can support the development of ruby-oauth tools via GitHub Sponsors, Liberapay, Open Collective, and PayPal.

Open Collective for Individuals

Support us with a monthly donation and help us continue our activities. [Become a backer]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No backers yet. Be the first!

Open Collective for Organizations

Become a sponsor and get your logo on our README on GitHub with a link to your site. [Become a sponsor]

NOTE: kettle-readme-backers updates this list every day, automatically.

No sponsors yet. Be the first!

Another way to support open-source

I’m driven by a passion to foster a thriving open-source community – a space where people can tackle complex problems, no matter how small. Revitalizing libraries that have fallen into disrepair, and building new libraries focused on solving real-world challenges, are my passions. I was recently affected by layoffs, and the tech jobs market is unwelcoming. I’m reaching out here because your support would significantly aid my efforts to provide for my family, and my farm (11 🐔 chickens, 2 🐶 dogs, 3 🐰 rabbits, 8 🐈‍ cats).

If you work at a company that uses my work, please encourage them to support me as a corporate sponsor. My work on gems you use might show up in bundle fund.

I’m developing a new library, floss_funding, designed to empower open-source developers like myself to get paid for the work we do, in a sustainable way. Please give it a look.

Floss-Funding.dev: 👉️ No network calls. 👉️ No tracking. 👉️ No oversight. 👉️ Minimal crypto hashing. 💡 Easily disabled nags

🔐 Security

See SECURITY.md.

🤝 Contributing

If you need some ideas of where to help, you could work on adding more code coverage, check issues or PRs, or use the gem and think about how it could be better.

We so if you make changes, remember to update it.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed instructions.

🚀 Release Instructions

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

Code Coverage

Coverage service badges

🪇 Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting with this project's codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists agrees to follow the .

🌈 Contributors

Made with contributors-img.

Also see GitLab Contributors: https://gitlab.com/ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader/-/graphs/main

📌 Versioning

This library follows for its public API where practical. For most applications, prefer the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision.

For example:

spec.add_dependency("anonymous_loader", "~> 0.0")

📌 Is "Platform Support" part of the public API? More details inside.

Dropping support for a platform can be a breaking change for affected users. If a release changes supported platforms, it should be called out clearly in the changelog and versioned with that impact in mind.

To get a better understanding of how SemVer is intended to work over a project's lifetime, read this article from the creator of SemVer:

• "Major Version Numbers are Not Sacred"

See CHANGELOG.md for a list of releases.

📄 License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT .

© Copyright

See LICENSE.md for the official copyright notice.

Copyright holders

• Copyright (c) 2026 Peter H. Boling

🤑 A request for help

Maintainers have teeth and need to pay their dentists. After getting laid off in an RIF in March, and encountering difficulty finding a new one, I began spending most of my time building open source tools. I'm hoping to be able to pay for my kids' health insurance this month, so if you value the work I am doing, I need your support. Please consider sponsoring me or the project.

To join the community or get help, use the RubyForum or Discord.

To say "thanks!" ☝️ Join the community or 👇️ send money.

💌 💌 💌

Please give the project a star ⭐ ♥.

Many parts of this project are actively managed by a kettle-jem smart template utilizing StructuredMerge.org merge contracts.

Thanks for RTFM. ☺️

Field	Value
Package	anonymous_loader
Description	🎭 AnonymousLoader resolves Ruby files from paths, gem metadata, or $LOAD_PATH and evaluates them inside anonymous modules to avoid top-level namespace collisions.
Homepage	https://github.com/ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader
Source	https://github.com/ruby-oauth/anonymous_loader
License	MIT
Funding	https://github.com/sponsors/pboling, https://ko-fi.com/pboling, https://liberapay.com/pboling/donate, https://opencollective.com/ruby-oauth, https://thanks.dev/u/gh/pboling, https://www.buymeacoffee.com/pboling