Last time I mentioned the environment.rb logger hack that helps understand Rails activity in script/console. The only problem was you had to add it to each Rails app’s environment.rb.

Thanks to a hint left by Chad Humpries we now have it system-wide via your .irbrc file.

Chuck the following in your ~/.irbrc file, load up a console and try a User.find(:first).

Update: I’ve slightly rewritten Chad’s code below to prevent a NoMethodError on nil, remove some unnecessary parenthesises and to use && instead of and.

script_console_running = ENV.include?('RAILS_ENV') && IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES] && IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES].include?('console_with_helpers')
rails_running = ENV.include?('RAILS_ENV') && !(IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES] && IRB.conf[:LOAD_MODULES].include?('console_with_helpers'))
irb_standalone_running = !script_console_running && !rails_running

if script_console_running
  require 'logger'
  Object.const_set(:RAILS_DEFAULT_LOGGER, Logger.new(STDOUT))
end

Look ma… inline logging:

$ ./script/console 
Loading development environment.
>> Person.find(:first)
  Person Load (0.000432)   SELECT * FROM people LIMIT 1
=> #<Person:0x139a2c8 @attributes={...}>

How dandy.