Rails 3 Engine & Static assets-Collection of common programming errors

I had a similar problem mounting a Rails 3.1 engine. I was receiving blank assets in stage and production.

I found a solution at http://jonswope.com/2010/07/25/rails-3-engines-plugins-and-static-assets/comment-page-1/#comment-87 and tweaked it to suit Rails 3.1 asset locations:

initializer "static assets" do |app|
  app.middleware.insert_before ::Rack::Lock, ::ActionDispatch::Static, "#{root}/app/assets"
end

I imagine there is a more elegant way but my effort today didn’t yield anything substantial.