Getting started with Compass

Compass is an open-source CSS authoring framework which uses the Sass stylesheet language to make writing stylesheets powerful and easy. If you’re not familiar with Sass, you can take a look at these simple tutorials to get caught up.

An introduction to Compass from Lorin Tackett on Vimeo.

Installing Compass

Compass is a tool that runs on the command line. On any system with ruby installed, open your terminal and type:

gem install compass

This will install Compass and Sass too. If you want to verify that compass is installed:

compass version

Manual Setup

compass create /path/to/project
cd /path/to/project
compass watch

Now you can edit the *.scss files in the sass directory with the text editor of your choice. the compass watch process will automatically compile your them into css in the stylesheets directory whenever they change. The files in the sass directory are yours and you can change them, delete them, add new ones, etc.

Manual setup using the Blueprint Framework

When starting a project from scrath:

compass create /path/to/project --using blueprint

When installing into an existing project:

cd /path/to/project
compass install blueprint

To read more about using the Blueprint framework with Compass, see the docs

Rails Setup

compass init rails /path/to/myrailsproject

Using Blueprint with Rails:

compass init rails /path/to/myrailsproject --using blueprint