title: How to load a spec_helper.rb automatically in RSpec 2
body: <p>When developing gems in Ruby, I almost always need a file in which I can configure RSpec to my needs and maybe before doing that, require some helper modules which should be available in all my <code>spec</code> examples.</p>
  
  <p>In Rails applications a file named <code>spec/spec_helper.rb</code> is used for that. One thing that annoys me is that in the typical Rails environment, you have to require this spec_helper.rb file in every file that contains examples for it to be loaded. In the past I had a lot of problems with this related to changing load paths and relative require paths inside the example files.</p>
  
  <p>Now for my gems, I would wish to have a way to just say RSpec to require the spec_helper.rb file before loading any of the examples files. Independent of the fact if I call rspec executable, or the rake spec task which I may define in my Rakefile.</p>
  
  <p>I know I can tell RSpec only the location of my spec_helper.rb is this spec_helper.rb requires all the example files manually, but I would also like to avoid the additional maintenance of that approach.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a nicer way to accomplish this?</p>