I know that the Rails asset pipeline will, under normal circumstances, minify and compress all JS files into one, making them smaller/obfuscated but impossible to access directly from another site. I also know that the /public folder contains files that bypass this process, and can be accessed directly by URL.

My question is, is there a way in Rails to combines these processes? Can I minify/compress a file using my Ruby on Rails gems and have it still be accessible by a static URL? I'm aware that I can place JS files in app/assets to have them go through the pipeline, but if I do that will they be accessible externally?