A common situation (for me at least) is something like the following:
# in routes.rb
# from restful_authentication, for instance
map.resources :users
map.resource :session
# ...
map.login :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'new', :conditions => {:method => :get}
map.logout :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'destroy', :conditions => {:method => :delete}
map.register :controller => 'users', :action => 'new', :conditions => {:method => :get}
# ...
map.root :controller => 'sessions', :action => 'new'
I don't know how many other people declare duplicated named routes to keep their views more readable (which is more comprehensible - <%= link_to 'Login', new_session_path %> or <%= link_to 'Login', login_path %>?), but I think that the map.root case is probably common.
That being the case, this patch allows you to specify an :alias key when declaring a route. When the declaration is processed, the system will look for an already-declared named route corresponding to the :alias value, and will automatically reuse the options declared for that route. For example, the snippet of routes.rb above would become:
# in routes.rb
# from restful_authentication, for instance
map.resources :users
map.resource :session
# ...
map.login :alias => :new_session
map.logout :alias => :session, :conditions => {:method => :delete}
map.register :alias => :new_user
# ...
map.root :new_session
The patch includes the code to make this work, an update to the documentation describing the behavior, and the appropriate test - and none of this breaks the existing tests.
