Basically, from what I found, by default it will automatically compile application.js and application.css if you want to use monolithic files. However, since we don't, we just needed to specify something to be compiled so it knows to treat admin, application, public, etc... as top level files. So what it does it looks for all of the main files, and then those use the asset pipeline require directives to include the rest. The JavaScripts are included in pages on a more selective basis, so we have to compile almost all of those. You'll see what I mean by where I use the "*". However, this doesn't require a change to the README. If the README and asset management doc are followed, it shouldn't require any additions to this configuration.