loading scripts in a defined order in rails app. how to?

I noticed that some jquery effects requires that scripts are loaded in proper order.. in my case it is working if they are loaded like this:

jquery 1.4.4
jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.min.js
autocomple开发者_开发知识库te-rails.js
jquery.cycle.all.js
....

if they load in different way then some of my animation or jquery feature is not working. So how do I specify in rails wich script to load first? Right now I did it in a primitive way by adding 1 2 3 numbers in front of names of every script I have in order that I need resulting in:

1jquery 1.4.4
2jquery-ui-1.8.16.custom.min.js
3autocomplete-rails.js
4jquery.cycle.all.js

It's primitive but it's working. Is there another way of doing it?

Rails 3

For Rails 3.0:

javascript_include_tag takes an array of sources, and includes them in the order that you define. You can omit :defaults, or define it in your application.rb file with config.action_view.javascript_expansions[:defaults] = %w(foo.js bar.js). :all includes all the javascripts in your /javascripts/ folder.

Therefore, it's best to have jQuery at the beginning, since most or all of your javascript files will use jQuery.

More documentation: http://apidock.com/rails/ActionView/Helpers/AssetTagHelper/JavascriptTagHelpers/javascript_include_tag