Required is a utility to require all files in a directory. Why would one want to require a whole bunch of files at once? I have used this gem on 2 projects to: - require dozens of jar files when working on a JRuby project - pull in all files before running code coverage (rcov), to find code that is otherwise dead/untouched Options for required include the ability to recursively descend through subdirectories, include/exclude files based on pattern matching, and to specify the order of requires based on filename. An array of all the files that were loaded is returned. Quick example: require 'required' required "some/path/to/dir" See the README for more examples, and description of options.