Question

I am creating a new theme for my cms using scss. I am currently on rails 3.0.7 but am going to upgrade to 3.1 as soon as the the final is released so i can use the asset pipeline stuff.

My question is where does compass fit into rails 3.1 ? is it still useful / needed?

Does it work with 3.1 ? Has anyone got any experience with this or any alternative?

thanks
rick

Answer 1

If you only use compass to include files, then it is not necessary, but Compass is much more than that. Compass is a Framework that includes tested patterns for creating multi browser stylesheets. It also makes is extremely simple to create sprites.

For example:

.simple { @include border-radius(4px, 4px); }

will produce:

.simple {
 -webkit-border-radius: 4px 4px;
 -moz-border-radius: 4px / 4px;
 -o-border-radius: 4px / 4px;
 -ms-border-radius: 4px / 4px;
 -khtml-border-radius: 4px / 4px;
 border-radius: 4px / 4px; 
}

If you are unclear of the value of Compass, I would recommend reading the guides.

Currently Compass is mostly supported by Rails 3.1.RC4 by adding the following gems:

gem "compass", :git => 'git://github.com/chriseppstein/compass.git', :branch => 'rails31'
gem 'sass-rails', :git => 'git://github.com/rails/sass-rails.git'