mapper.rb:143:in `default_controller_and_action': missing :action (ArgumentError)

I'm trying out Rails 3 for a small web project we need done at work. After spending more time than I wanted yesterday getting everything configured correctly on my Mac (namely mysql 64 bit), I was finally ready to start generating some MVC action. I followed the steps on the http://guides.rails.info/getting_started.html Rails 3 intro page to generate a controller for my home index. This added a route to my routes.rb,

get "home/index"

I thought I'd get fancy also add a root controller and view for my website, so I coped that and slightly modified it to

root :to => "home/index"

Cool. Next, I went ahead and tried to generate a new scaffold for my first model, but uh oh, there was a problem!

/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/actionpack-3.0.0.beta4/lib/action_dispatch/routing/mapper.rb:143:in `default_controller_and_action': missing :action (ArgumentError)

...

from /Users/.../Code/.../config/routes.rb:2

...

from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/railties-3.0.0.beta4/lib/rails/commands.rb:16

from script/rails:6:in `require'

from script/rails:6

My first reaction was, "!@# yet another problem with Rails 3 and my system," but after some searching for the error turned up nothing, I decided that I had probably screwed something up. Looking a little more closely at the stack trace of the error, I identified that the scaffold generation was in part based on code from my own app and not just the rails gems. Hmm, probabilities rising that I'm the culprit.

The error says that the default controller is missing an action. I checked out the gem, mapper.rb, and saw that it's parsing out some variable named "to" for a controller and action. I then opened up my routes.rb and saw that line of copied code, root :to => "home/index". I then thought back to the new rails syntax that I'd learned in the video tutorials and immediately realized my folly. One quick change,

root :to => "home#index"

and the generator is back to working. Although it can definitely be a pain dealing with open source software, it certainly is nice to be able to see the source of your problems.