I have used sass before and it's great. But Slow. And ruby Sass is being dropped.
I'd like to swtich to a wrapper around libsass. I think that is the accepted upgrade path.
How do I do this? I've tried installing SassC via homebrew, but it doesn't seem to work the same way.
eg
sassc --watch scss:css --style compressed
fails with error, unrecognized option `--watch'
What do I need to do to get sass compilation working in the terminal using libsass?
There was a discussion in the issue section of this project. It is not implemented and nobody was working on it according to this thread. But several workarounds were posted (e.g. using fswatch or node-sass). One suggestion was to use gosass which looks quite young but supports your -watch option.
Maybe this is something for you. If not you will find probably a lot of wrappers for libsass out there.
Is there a difference between different compilers, for example if I use node-sass or gulp-sass, and I've seen a few places with Postcss-nesting, postcss-variables and so on, is this the same thing? Is there a difference between them syntax-wise?
There are no differences in sass syntax among the compilers.
There might be other differences for which you should read the documentation of specific compiler you use.
gulp-sass is a Gulp plugin built with node-sass. You might want to check this answer for more information: stackoverflow
Why do I need to install so much just to use Susy or about any sass framework?
I got really interested in using sass and sass frameworks but I can't figure out a right way to start using it. I don't get why I need to have so much installed to use just one thing. Also, I have never installed something through some sort of terminal so this freaks my out immensely, why can't I just download a zip file.
If know a useful tutorial on where to start, that would also help.
thanks in advance
Your Mac already comes with a version of Ruby (with Sierra even a recent enough version). Unless you are actively develping on different versions of Ruby, you don't need to install a custom Ruby (or even a ruby version manager).
You probably still need a compiler. Here, the xcode command line tools are sufficient. You can install them with xcode-select --install.
Generally, all these tools are comand-line oriented. It will help you tremendously if you try to get at least a high-level understanding of how the command line works and how you can use it with your tools. This will also help you when it comes to deploy your solution to a live-server, often running Linux with just the command line.
Compass is not required for Susy. In fact, Compass is no longer maintained, so I highly recommend against using it. Susy only requires Sass, but you can use any flavor of Sass - Libsass, Ruby Sass, Node Sass, Gulp Sass, etc. If it compiles Sass, it will work with Susy. There are instructions for various setups in the Susy docs.
Susy also doesn't require command-line knowledge itself, though Sass is often compiled that way. There are tools that provide GUI wrappers for Sass, if you aren't comfortable in the command line. I think CodeKit ships with Susy included.
I am new to SASS. I am using this as a guide to learn Bourbon -
http://www.git-tower.com/learn/bourbon-neat-bitters/getting-ready/introduction
I followed all the instructions and it displays fine on my local machine. But when I edit _layout.scss, it doesn't compile to styles.css. I installed Compass and had it watch the project folder, but same results. My changes won't take.
Am I missing a step?
This is likely more of a sass importing/file-name issue than anything specifically with bourbon. I'd check out http://sass-lang.com/guide . Sass-lang put together a really nice guide to sass that includes things like imports, etc.
Also, Compass app can bring some things to the party that can conflict with Bourbon. I'd recommend using the sass app or a desktop app like https://prepros.io which can be easier starting out.
Hope this helps 🍻
How can I try CoffeeScript on Windows?
The installation instructions are only for *nix: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/#installation
EDIT:
Since I asked this a while ago, many new answers have appeared. The number ( and quality ) of options for Windows users has been increased a lot. I "accepted" an answer a long time ago, then changed to other ( better ) answers as they came up, but I have now decided to not accept any answer, and let the community ( votes ) show which answers are best. Thanks to everyone for the input.
UPDATE: See my other answer to this question, How can I compile CoffeeScript from .NET? for a far more accurate and up-to-date list of the current options.
CoffeeScript-Compiler-for-Windows works well.
Maybe it was more complicated when this question was posted. But as of 2012, CoffeeScript is as easy to use on any platform. The instructions are the same for Windows, Mac, or Linux
Install Nodejs from http://nodejs.org/
Install CoffeeScript globally with the node package manager npm install -g coffeescript or locally npm install --save-dev coffeescript
Write a script in your favourite text editor. Save it, say as hello.coffee
Run your script coffee hello.coffee or compile it coffee -c hello.coffee (to hello.js)
Node.js runs on Cygwin these days, so that's probably your best bet with getting CoffeeScript running on Windows. I'd try that first.
If you have a different preferred JavaScript runtime, you can probably use the prebuilt-compiler (extras/coffee-script.js). For example, if you include that script on a webpage, you can call
CoffeeScript.compile(code);
... to get back the compiled JavaScript string.
UPDATE 2012-04-12: Cygwin is no longer needed to run Node on Windows. Microsoft
worked with Joyent through 2H 2011 to improve node's support for
Windows IOCP async IO. Node 0.6 was the first release of node to
natively support Windows.
You can run the CoffeeScript compiler under good old Window Script Host (cscript.exe), a standard component on Windows since Windows 98. Admittedly I tried this a while back and it didn't work, but I tried again recently and now all the standard CoffeeScript tests compile just fine.
A bit of plumbing code using a *.wsf file and coffee-script.js is all you need. My code is on GitHub: https://github.com/duncansmart/coffeescript-windows
I blogged about it here: http://blog.dotsmart.net/2011/06/20/the-simplest-way-to-compile-coffeescript-on-windows/
You can use jcoffeescript as a command-line solution.
It uses a Java-based javascript engine (Rhino) and wraps up the task of compiling coffee-script.js from the CoffeeScript project. This allows it to run the CoffeeScript compiler as a Java program.
The command to use (on Windows/Linux) looks like this:
java -jar jcoffeescript-1.0.jar < foo.coffee > foo.js
You will need to download & build the Java source code (use IntelliJ Community Edition to avoid downloading Ant) or a pre-built download for CoffeeScript v1.0.
I now use jcoffeescript in place of the Ruby solution (another answer here), because this allows me to keep up with the latest CoffeeScript version.
You can use a command-line version of CoffeeScript by installing Ruby on Windows and then installing the CoffeeScript Gem.
After that, the command-line is available, for example, 'coffee bla.coffee' - to compile your CoffeeScript code down to JavaScript code.
The only disadvantage doing it this way (not using Node.js) is that the Ruby version of CoffeeScript is restricted to version 0.3.2 - the last version written in Ruby before it was moved over to Node.js.
*However, I still use the Ruby version of CoffeeScript in my current employment and my personal web page and I don't see much of a problem as this version of CoffeeScript is quite mature and most of the features listed on the CoffeeScript website can be used.
*striked out this last statement which was correct at the time but is becoming more incorrect every few days; CoffeeScript has now advanced a long way since 0.3.2 and is past 1.1
There're already bunch of answers here, but let me add mine. I wrote a .NET library for compiling CoffeeScript on Windows.
As jashkenas suggested, I've used the pre-compiled extras/coffee-script.js file.
Together with the Jurassic JavaScript compiler I've wrapped it all up in a single library: CoffeeSharp
The library also ships with a commandline tool and a HttpHandler for ASP.NET web development.
I've used this one: https://bitbucket.org/maly/coffeescript-win/zealots
looks working well, althouth you need to manually need to update coffee.script from 0.95 to 1.0.1.
Since node.js is now ported to Windows, this is actually pretty easy:
http://www.colourcoding.net/blog/archive/2011/09/20/using-coffeescript-on-windows.aspx
If you want to use CoffeeScript in an ASP.NET application then you can use this HTTP handler to serve compiled CoffeeScript code.
I haven't tried this myself yet, but it seems to be an answer. (I've downloaded and installed but not used it yet.)
There's an add-in for Visual Studio 2010 that adds CoffeeScript editing to VS (among other things).
It's called Web Workbench and is downloaded as a vsix. (i.e. can be downloaded from within the VS UI.)
I'm only putting this in only as an answer to the more general implied question for "How can I try" tools that don't normally run on Windows or have yet to be ported. Use a virtual machine running a UNIX-like OS such as Linux or BSD.
Provided you have enough RAM and are willing to learn enough to get around, it will make trying open source software a lot easier. In the CoffeeScript case you can still do things like --watch on a shared folder and remain in Windows land most of the time. You also won't pollute your system with tools and services you try and don't buy into, which is handy if you do that a lot.
Consider using Chocolatey to install http://chocolatey.org/packages/CoffeeScript on Windows.
(Installing Chocolatey : https://github.com/chocolatey/chocolatey/wiki/Installation)