Sass and Compass on Windows, do they play nice?

By chandraswami on 26 Aug 2014 at 04:49 UTC

I have been watching the Theming tutorials for Omega. Specifically the ones by Scott Tolinski. He seems to indicate that you need Ruby, Ruby-Gems, rvm and Xcode to Theme the way he does. I have watched the tutorials and do not see , so far, where Xcode comes in (maybe that is just a preference and not a requirement). He appears to be the only one who has extensive Omega-Theming tutorials. At least ones that don't cost money like Lynda.com.

I am on a PC and I have not been able to install rvm, because it appears that is is NOT compatible with the Windows operating system. Many web-posts indicate that it will not work. I tried the suggestion of installing Cygwin, but that also did not seem to install properly and I read posts from many others saying that they were frustrated trying to go the Cygwin route as well.

There were posts with recommendations for VMWare-player to install a Dual Operating environment on a Windows system. Then the idea is to install Ubuntu. Then all the Ruby-Gems and rvm issues go away because both of those softwares are right at home on a Linux or MacOS base. Actually it is rvm that needs the Linux/MacOS base, and it must be used to re-install Ruby and Ruby-Gems. I already have Ruby installed, but not Ruby-Gems.

Never before had I realized that Omega-Sass-Compass was such a Linux-MacOS thing. There must be Windows users out there. I know that there are people out there Theming Omega without Sass or Compass, using panels and such, but it really does seem that Omega is designed to use Sass/Compass. And it seems that Sass & Compass require Ruby, Ruby-Gems and rvm.

I have Sass & Compass installed, but I am getting the impression that they won't work properly because they depend on the Ruby-Trilogy (Ruby, Ruby-Gems & rvm).

I run into different issues trying to install Ruby, Ruby-Gems and rvm on my webserver which is Linux. There I get permission issues, and anyway I am trying to follow the work-flow of designing on my Localhost (Windows) and then copying the files over to the webserver when all design-work is finished.

Here are my questions:
(1) Has anyone on a Windows platform been able to use Sass & Compass?
(2) Did they install Ruby, Ruby-Gems and rvm?
(3) If not how did they get Sass/Compass to work? or did it matter that the Ruby Trilogy was not fully baked?
(4) Is it really a big deal to install VMWare-player?
(5) Then do you have to install your WAMP-Stack again now as a MAMP-Stack?
(6) Are any of the above assumptions wrong?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read these question. I started out thinking that all this would be way simpler than it now appear to be and I have not even started Theming yet.

Comments

Never before had I realized

Jaypan commented 26 August 2014 at 17:18

Never before had I realized that Omega-Sass-Compass was such a Linux-MacOS thing

I don't have the answers to your questions (I stopped using Windows four years ago), but I just wanted to comment that OSX runs on a UNIX kernel, so they are not separate things. Rather, SASS/Compass work on OSX because of this UNIX kernel.

Success with windows

edrupal commented 28 August 2014 at 19:12

I use SASS and Compass on windows 7 with great success.

I simply followed the instructions at http://thesassway.com/beginner/getting-started-with-sass-and-compass and all worked fine.

Do Sass & Compass play nice with Windows?

chandraswami commented 5 September 2014 at 15:18

Yes, I followed this system explained on this web-help-page, but still no workie.

Sass and Compass on Windows, do they play nice?

chandraswami commented 24 September 2014 at 23:39

So far every attempt at using compass on my Windows set up has resulted in failure. I gave up on rvm because I tried running cygwin (which seemed to work fine on my system), but cygwin could not work for rvm (the child info fork :: abort 0x00133a is already occupied error) (rvm goes on forever building something that can never be built because none of the files are actually copied).

Then I tried installing VMWare to run Ubuntu on my machine. VMWare installed but when I tried to run Ubuntu, I was greeted with a Blue Screen of Death. On the next attempt Windows did not go belly up, but refused to run the VMWare-Ubuntu combination.

I tried installing compass using bundler, which gives me [Failed to build gem native extensions] errors with a [make failed, exit code 2].

I tried just running 'gem compass install' which works, but then when I run 'compass watch', I get 3 errors: a [File to import not found or unreadable: breakpoint] error, a [File to import not found or unreadable: variables/**/*] error and another [File to import not found or unreadable: breakpoint] error.

[Edrupal] By the way, I installed Compass using the steps mentioned in that web-help-page, but it still makes no difference for my system.

I uninstalled Ruby 2.0.0 and installed Ruby 1.9.3-p545. I nuked my Omega-Subtheme and created a new version. Nothing changed.

Presently, I am stuck with the [File to import not found or unreadable: breakpoint] error. It appears that Compass does not like the breakpoint file for some reason and will NOT include it. I have looked: breakpoint is listed as one of my 'gems' and the '_breakpoint.scss' file exists in the [C:\Ruby193\lib\ruby\gems\1.9.1\gems\breakpoint-2.0.5\stylesheets\] directory, but Compass does not like it for some reason (if the error message is to be believed). Compass appears to be running (it takes a Cntrl+C to exit), but Compass must be ignoring some of the Sass-Files in building its CSS.

I have tried using Scout and I get: [ArgumentError: Error #3214].

So it looks like for me to get anywhere I will have to understand the Ruby-Development system, versioning conflicts (without the aid of rvm or bundler), and its arcane stack-trace messages. I have yet to understand Compass, its dependencies, possible version conflicts and where it needs to have its files placed.

Sass & Compass on Mac (NOW RESOLVED)

chandraswami commented 22 September 2014 at 19:29

9/22/2014

After much searching and software-thrashing, I have now got a functioning version of Sass-Compass. This is what it took to accomplish it for me.

1) I purchased a used MacBook-Pro (2008-Mavericks) so that I could use 'rvm' which is still unavailable on the Windows Platform.

2) At first 'rvm' would not install even on Mac, but finally it came to be installed. Not sure here what the trouble at first was or what exactly fixed it. I tried the 'curl' install then later just the 'ruby gem' type of install for 'rvm'. Interesting, you use ruby to install rvm and later use rvm to install rubies. Note that the original system ruby version runs OUTSIDE of rvm.

3) After rvm was installed, I installed the latest version of 'ruby', with "rvm install 2.1.2". This later proved to be a mistake.

4) Then I installed 'bundler' with "gem install bundler". All these installs were done in my HOME Directory.

5) Next I changed Directories over to the '...sites/all/themes/MySite' directory. To my surprise, just by typing the words "bundle install" into the CLI, bundler knew to install all the relevant ruby-gems to make Compass work (probably some config.rb magic) (How did it know I wanted Compass?). But the bundler-install failed due to a gem called 'eventmachine'. Error-message-excerpt--"Be sure eventmachine succeeds before running bundler".

6) Checking the 'readme' on eventmachine, I discovered that eventmachine only recognizes two versions of ruby. The most recent one of those two is ruby-1.9.2.

7) I downloaded & installed ruby-1.9.2 with rvm, "rvm install 1.9.2". Then I switched to the ruby-1.9.2 version using "rvm use ruby-1.9.2" or just "rvm use 1.9.2" (in the HOME directory, though I am not sure this matters).

8) Again I tried the bundle install and this time bundler had no problem with eventmachine. However another gem 'listner' failed to install, same type of error message. For a while I thought that this must be the classical catch-22 situation. With ruby-1.9.2 too early for listner and ruby-2.1.2 too late for eventmachine.

9) I tried an rvm install of ruby-1.9.3 then switched to ruby-1.9.3 via "rvm use 1.9.3". Then another try at bundle-install, "bundle install" into the CLI in the '...sites/all/MySite' directory.

10) This time, it appears that bundler was happy with ruby-1.9.3 and had no problems with either eventmachine or listner.

11) The installation of all the gems necessary for Compass now went through with NO errors or gem-install-fails.

12) When I started Compass using "bundle exec compass watch", now I got Compass errors about 'breakpoint', 'singularitygs', 'toolkit-no-css' and 'toolkit/border-box' files being missing or unreadable. Turns out that all that was necessary was just to create these blank files in the '...themes/MySite/sass' Folder. A pertinent note here is that they must be named '_breakpoint.scss', _singularitygs.scss' and '_toolkit-no-css.scss' respectively. These files must be under the sass-Folder. The 'toolkit/border-box' file must be named '_border-box' and, you guessed it, must be placed in a subdirectory of the sass directory named 'toolkit'. These are just blank files. I am not sure yet whether they are all relevant or not. If you are wondering, the underscore '_' preceding these files indicates that they are 'partial' scss files that will be merged into the resulting css files later.

13) Finally a successful version of Compass that will watch without errors.