This is a draft. I'm still learning, so this information could be completely wrong.
Avoiding the Asset Pipeline
Option 1. Avoiding it in Production Only
- Disable assets in production.rb
- Create public/stylesheets and public/javascripts folders, and put your css and js files there
- Modify application.html.erb to reference your own files instead of the generated "application.css" and "application.js"
- (Optional) Specify the --no-assets option when using the scaffold and controller generators
- (Optional) Try to ignore all the app/assets noise without going crazy.
Option 2. Avoiding it Entirely
- Generate your app without the dependency on sprockets
rails new sandbox --skip-sprockets
- Remove (or comment out) the :assets group in the Gemfile
Then do steps 1-5 above as well.