Incorrect Join Order for Multiple ActiveRecord Merges

[niedfelj]

Steps to reproduce

When attempting to merge multiple relations together, the last one below incorrectly generates joins that are out of order and throw an error in Postgres. Not sure if this is related to #25806. There seem to be a few open issues that have not been resolved that are similar to this one.

location_filter = Location.where(@location_wheres.join(' AND '))
user_filter = User.opt_in.where("birthday >= ? and birthday <= ? #{@birthday_null}", Time.now() - @end_age.years, Time.now() - @start_age.years).where(@gender).joins(:location).merge(location_filter)
@all_list_items = account_group.list_items.joins(:contributor_user).merge(user_filter)
@all_lists = account_group.lists.merge(@all_list_items)

All of the queries except for the last one are successful:

!! #<ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid: PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR:  missing FROM-clause entry for table "users"
LINE 1: ...LEFT OUTER JOIN "locations" ON "locations"."id" = "users"."l...
                                                             ^
: SELECT "lists".* FROM "lists" LEFT OUTER JOIN "locations" ON "locations"."id" = "users"."location_id" LEFT OUTER JOIN "users" ON "users"."id" = "list_items"."contributor_user_id" INNER JOIN "list_items" ON "lists"."id" = "list_items"."list_id" WHERE (list_status_code!='Deleted') AND "list_items"."domain" = $1 AND "list_items"."domain" = $2 AND "users"."opt_out" = $3 AND (birthday >= '1817-02-02 18:03:12.184201' and birthday <= '2017-02-02 18:03:12.184290'  or birthday is null) AND (1=1) AND (city='Brooklyn')>

Expected behavior

It should do the joins in the correct order.

Actual behavior

It joins in the wrong order and throws an error.

System configuration

Rails version: 5.0.1

Ruby version: 2.3.3

[eileencodes]

Can you recreate this error using our bug report template? That will make it easier for us to track down the bug you're seeing.

[rails-bot]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not been commented on for at least three months.
The resources of the Rails team are limited, and so we are asking for your help.
If you can still reproduce this error on the 5-1-stable branch or on master, please reply with all of the information you have about it in order to keep the issue open.
Thank you for all your contributions.

[aleksandrs-ledovskis]

Tracked #24281