How can I get Compass to work in Visual Studio via NuGet? - nuget

Question

My developer friend who has the luxury of developing in a non-Windows environment has been raving about Compass. I finally decided I wanted to give it a try. I'm tired of trying to keep up with all of the intricacies of cross-browser CSS.
So, I found it on NuGet, and installed it.
I installs to my solutions root directory in the packages directory:
$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\
It comes with a Readme that states the following message:
Ruby Compass v. 0.12.2
Compass is installed in its own NuGet package dir, and available by
'compass' command in "packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3" folder.
To compile Compass files during build, add the next line to the
project pre-build events:
"$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\compass" compile
"$(ProjectDir)."
So, I placed the line in my pre-build events, saved, and tried to build my project. However, I get an error as follows:
The command
""$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\compass" compile "$(ProjectDir)."" exited with code 1.
Notice: It actually shows the full path to the ProjectDir and SolutionDir as it's supposed too in the error message. I replaced them with the tokens to keep the project name unanimous.
Let me mention that I tried variations of the suggestion pre-build line:
"$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\compass" compile "$(ProjectDir)"
"$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\compass" compile "$(ProjectDir)css"
"$(SolutionDir)packages\Ruby.Compass.0.12.2.3\compass" compile "$(ProjectDir)css\test.scss"
The first one just removed that trailing .. The second one pointed it to the directory where all my css files are stored. The third one pointed it to the exact file I was trying to compile was located.
I opened up compass.cmd which is the file it is calling, and it looks like the following:
#echo off
"%~dp0ruby\bin\compass" %*
I'm assuming this calls the compass file in the ruby/bin folder, which looks like this:
#!C:/downloads/ruby-2.0.0-p247-x64-mingw32/ruby-2.0.0-p247-x64-mingw32/bin/ruby.exe
#
# This file was generated by RubyGems.
#
# The application 'compass' is installed as part of a gem, and
# this file is here to facilitate running it.
#
require 'rubygems'
version = ">= 0"
if ARGV.first
str = ARGV.first
str = str.dup.force_encoding("BINARY") if str.respond_to? :force_encoding
if str =~ /\A_(.*)_\z/
version = $1
ARGV.shift
end
end
gem 'compass', version
load Gem.bin_path('compass', 'compass', version)
From there, I'm not sure what is going on. I'm not a Ruby person.
Is there an issue that I'm overlooking here?
Has anyone else been able to install Ruby.Compass via NuGet?
How can I get this working in Visual Studio without having to fight with Ruby?

Answer 1

From: http://codewith.us/automating-css-generation-in-visual-studio-using-sasscompass/
"Note that, if there are issues with your SCSS files, you will receive some variation of the error below.
Error 36 The command "del "C:Projectspubliccss*.css" /S
compass compile "C:Projectspublic" --force" exited with code 1.
Open your Output window (click View -> Output or press Ctrl+W, O), and select “Build” in the “Show output from:” menu. Scroll up until you find your command in the log and you should get a little more insight into what portion of the command failed."