Notes about Compass, the CSS generator.
Compass will keep an eye on your SASS files (actually more recently your SCSS files - SCSS is the latest syntax, while SASS is older) and compile them in to CSS files on the fly, or when you ask it to.
Compile on the fly
If you are in a project directory /path/to/project, which contains ‘sass’ and ‘css’ subdirectories, then you can have CSS updated when the SCSS/SASS files change.
cd /path/to/project
compass watch
Compile on command
To compile the CSS files when asked:
cd /path/to/project
compass compile
You may need to add the --force option to have compass overwrite your existing CSS files:
compass compile --force
Gotchas
CSS not updating
If you edit a mixin or partial, then the CSS that uses them should be automatically updated. However I have had occasions when this didn’t happen for some reason.
Two workarounds:
- Either edit the SASS/SCSS that uses the mixin/partial, in which case
compass watchwill notice the edit and update the corresponding CSS. - Or run
compass compile --forceto force recompilation of all CSS files.
