Re: Total ruby and compass newby -- desperatly looking for help with compass!

[Chris Eppstein]

Hi Marco,

I'm sorry you're having a hard time getting started. You don't have to use a ruby web framework to use compass and sass. The compass command line tool will help you compile your sass files into css for whatever project you're most familiar with. Don't try to tackle too much at once.

If you have an existing project that you want to use compass with the steps are simple enough:

compass -c

will create a configuration file. Edit it and tell compass about the directory structure of your project.

Then:

compass -f blueprint .

will install the compass stylesheets to get you started. This is optional, but recommended.

If you don't have an existing project then simply type:

compass -f blueprint my_project

to create and setup your project in one simple step.

Lastly:

compass

without any arguments will (re)compile the existing sass stylesheets to css and if you use the --watch option it will run in the foreground and recompile the stylesheets when they change.

I do think that ruby on rails is a great application framework and rails users benefit from tight integration that eliminates the need to run the compass compiler, but if compass is what is exciting you right now, you needn't learn rails at the same time.

For more information, please see

http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass/getting-started

Good luck!

chris

On Sun, May 10, 2009 at 6:20 AM, Marco Strack <52...@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi Chris,

sorry for emailing you directly! I don't know how to solve my problem
with compass any more, spent hours reading the web but ain't got a clue
on how to start using it.

What is runnig:

# Apache and vhosts on my local ubuntu machine

#ruby and rails

# installed everything according to the >>getting started<< howto

Problem:
I don't know how to use the ruby framework. I think I got it all wrong!
Stumbled upon your compass project and thought >>Wow, that' it! Finally
something like varaiables for css, less code to edit, more structure
etc.<<

I don't know ruby, I red several beginner howtos, even found a great
online learning tool!

So I thought, installing compass etc. would give me a local developping
framework, which sort of compiles my css file which I then put on my
virtual host to test my local site.

What I am missing is a _complete_ howto for total ruby/rails/compass
newbies.

I installed everything, what is said in your howtos. But what comes
after this? This is the point, where I don't know what to do any more!

Do I have to start a >>ruby on rails project<< on one of the vhosts? Can
I use compass just like I use e.g. a compiler by editing commands in the
terminal, working in a directory in my home directory?

I want to write a beginners howto for others like me who are puzzled.
I'm thinking of st. like:

1. installing a lamp system
2. installing ruby/rails/haml, compass etc.
3. how to use compass for the very first time:

3.1 the first ruby project (if this is really necessary for using
compass)

3.2 how to use compass locally (I thought compass could be used as a
tool to generate css files locally, e.g. some where in my home
directory)


What I usually do is creating a directory in my home directory, which
contains all the files I need for a new site design. Everything just
html/php files and plain css. These are copied on my local vhost.

I thought I could use compass to develop the css I usually edit in a
editor (I use cssedit on a mac). Am I wrong?!

I hope you understand my problem and again sorry for so much text. But I
really would like to use compass too ;o)

Can you help me? I would gladly write a howto for the compass project
wiki!


Thanks for your compass and the time reading my to long eMail and for
forgiving me my >>german english<< ;o)

Greetings from Aachen, Germany,

Marco

[Chris Eppstein]

Since late last week, a manual installation of haml should no longer be necessary. I've not yet had time to make the blog post reflect this.

Really, installation should be as simple as:

$ gem sources -a http://gems.github.com

$ sudo gem install chriseppstein-compass

$ compass -v

Compass 0.6.6

Copyright (c) 2008-2009 Chris Eppstein

Released under the MIT License.

If it's not that simple, the problem is with your ruby and/or ruby gems installation please refer to the appropriate forums for help with either ruby installation or your distro's ruby setup -- That's outside the scope of what I'm capable of providing.

I'm sorry you're having a hard time, and I hope you can get things resolved. It's usually a trivial install for most folks. Once (if) you get things working, if there's something you feel is missing from the docs that would have made things easier for you, please check back and let me know.

Chris

On Mon, May 11, 2009 at 2:26 PM, Marco Strack <52...@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi Chris,

thank your for your prompt reply! I have been researching why I'm not
able to run compass. Again I spent 4 hours in front of my ubuntu laptop,
searching and reading the web...frustrating.

> I'm sorry you're having a hard time getting started. You don't have to
> use a ruby web framework to use compass and sass. The
> compass command line tool will help you compile your sass files into
> css for whatever project you're most familiar with. Don't try to
> tackle too much at once.

Thanks, so I got one question solved :o)
Skipping ruby for later (still very qurious)

> If you have an existing project that you want to use compass with the
> steps are simple enough:
>
>
> compass -c
>
>
> will create a configuration file. Edit it and tell compass about the
> directory structure of your project.
>
>
> Then:
>
>
> compass -f blueprint .
>
>
> will install the compass stylesheets to get you started. This is
> optional, but recommended.
>
>
> If you don't have an existing project then simply type:
>
>
> compass -f blueprint my_project
>
>
> to create and setup your project in one simple step.
>
>
> Lastly:
>
>
> compass
>
>
> without any arguments will (re)compile the existing sass stylesheets
> to css and if you use the --watch option it will run in the foreground
> and recompile the stylesheets when they change.
>
>
> I do think that ruby on rails is a great application framework and
> rails users benefit from tight integration that eliminates the need to
> run the compass compiler, but if compass is what is exciting you right
> now, you needn't learn rails at the same time.

Thank you very very much for your help!

> For more information, please see
> http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass/getting-started

Right now I'm reading
<http://acts-as-architect.blogspot.com/2008/11/compass-primer.html>
and I think I found my biggest Problem: haml doesn't install properly! I
did everything like the primer tolde me (I veryfied that my ruby
installation is running. It is, because I could get the ruby web page
after starting the rupy server).

Everything is working just until I want to verify the sass installation!
Here ist my terminal output:

---begin output---

str@str-laptop:~$ git clone git://github.com/nex3/haml.git
Initialized empty Git repository in /home/str/haml/.git/
remote: Counting objects: 11375, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (3943/3943), done.
remote: Total 11375 (delta 7679), reused 10708 (delta 7215)
Receiving objects: 100% (11375/11375), 1.43 MiB | 454 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (7679/7679), done.
str@str-laptop:~$ cd haml
str@str-laptop:~/haml$ rake install
(in /home/str/haml)
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rake/gempackagetask.rb:13:Warning: Gem::manage_gems is
deprecated and will be removed on or after March 2009.
 Successfully built RubyGem
 Name: haml
 Version: 2.1.0
 File: haml-2.1.0.gem
sudo gem install --no-ri pkg/haml-2.1.0
Successfully installed haml-2.1.0
1 gem installed
Installing RDoc documentation for haml-2.1.0...
str@str-laptop:~/haml$ sass -v
Die Anwendung »sass« ist momentan nicht installiert.  Um sie zu
installieren, können Sie Folgendes eingeben:
sudo apt-get install sufary
bash: sass: command not found
str@str-laptop:~/haml$

---end output---

What puzzles me is the error message after editing "rake install"...

googled for the last 3 hours, no solution found. Do you have a link
where I can find more information? Till now I wrote down all the things
I did to my ubuntu, so that I can write a dummy guide, provided that
someday I can get my framework up and running ;o)

May be you have a hint for me, if you can find the time. Sorry for
bothering with stupid newbies questions!

Thanks for your presious time for helping me so far,
regards,

Marco Strack

[Jack]

Chris,
I'm not sure how I have gone awry, but I too have been having a lot of
problems under ubuntu trying to get compass working as described at
http://wiki.github.com/chriseppstein/compass/getting-started. Compass
looks amazing, and I'm really excited to see if I can get it working
in my next project! I've spent hours googling and troubleshooting
without much success.

The installation seems to go fine up to the end:

$ sudo gem install chriseppstein-compass

Successfully installed chriseppstein-compass-0.6.9
1 gem installed
$

Then I try to use compass:
$ compass -h
bash: compass: command not found
$

It's not on the path, and I try to find it:
$ locate bin/compass
/var/lib/gems/1.9.0/bin/compass
/var/lib/gems/1.9.0/gems/chriseppstein-compass-0.6.9/bin/compass
$

Ok, here I found something. So I tried to create a project:
$ /var/lib/gems/1.9.0/gems/chriseppstein-compass-0.6.9/bin/compass -f
blueprint myproject
No such framework: "blueprint"
$

No good. (the other bin/compass produces the same result)
So I checked to see what frameworks I did have:
$ /var/lib/gems/1.9.0/gems/chriseppstein-compass-0.6.9/bin/compass --
list-frameworks
$

No frameworks as far as I can tell.

At this point I realized that whatever I was doing, I was not having
success. Somehow I have ended up with compass installed, but off my
$PATH and without any frameworks. The instructions make installation
look really painless, and the install was pretty straightforward so I
really don't know how I went wrong. Has anyone gotten compass working
with ubuntu 9.04? Maybe there are additional installation steps for
linux users?

Thanks for your time!
Jack

On May 11, 5:48 pm, Chris Eppstein <ch...@eppsteins.net> wrote:
> Since late last week, a manual installation of haml should no longer be
> necessary. I've not yet had time to make the blog post reflect this.
> Really, installation should be as simple as:
>

> $ gem sources -ahttp://gems.github.com

> $ gem sources -ahttp://gems.github.com

[Chris Eppstein]

Jack, the problem was on my end. The new gem framework I switched to today worked different from how I thought it did -- resulting in some files missing (you know, the frameworks).

Many thanks to Philipe Farias(http://github.com/phmf) for tracking down the problem!

I've pushed version 0.6.10 to github, I hope it works better!

Sorry for the hassle,

Chris