Omega theme with Compass and SASS - what are the best practices?

Take a look at a patch I made to get Sass+Compass working with Omega:
http://drupal.org/node/1297464
If you're coming to the DrupalCamp NJ on Saturday, I'll give you a quick briefing of how to get this working. The long and short of it is edit your config.rb file to point to css instead of stylesheets for your CSS compilation, and inside of your Sass folder, have one .sass/.scss file for each of the CSS files that come with Omega. If you want to share variables/mixins/functions between those files, you're going to need to create a partial (most commonly called _base.scss) that you @import into each of those files, and that's where you put those items.

My patch is quite out of date because they didn't take the time to merge it in when I originally built it, so if there are items like that beyond the Sass stuff (I believe the @import stuff is Sass @import of _base.scss), they're bygons of a older version of Omega

My patch adds a forked HTML5 base theme w/Sass+Compass stuff because I didn't want to hack anymore of Omega to add a flag to Drush to put the Sass+Compass stuff in. Otherwise, it's the same thing you'er doing, plus the _base.scss partial w/imports (a best practice I'd advocate for either way).
As for Drush Compass, without looking at the code, it sounds like a Drush alias for compass watch (I will look further though).
The stylesheets you get with a base theme is blank to begin with, so all I'm doing with is importin the base partial to share variables, functions, and mixins across all of your stylesheets. As for not being able to convert between CSS and Sass, if you're using Sassy CSS syntax (.scss), all you need to do is rename your .css file .scss and you're good. There's also tools like this:
http://css2sass.heroku.com/
So yah, you can convert back from CSS to Sass. That being said, none of the CSS you get from a brand new starterkit from Omega have any CSS in them already, so this isn't an issue.

Sassy module is a whole other beast all together and is an alternative to having Sass/Compass compiler running locally than best practices for Omega+Sass

So far Drush supports Compass, but not Sassy.

Also, there is a good tutorial about setting up Compass and SASS with the Basic theme by Steve Krueger

http://thejibe.com/blog/11/1/getting-started-basic-sass-and-compass-drupal

It explains how to install the profile with Drush Make

Alternatively you can check out his example profile at git clone git@github.com:stevekrueger/basic_compass_profile.git

this is pretty much just a repeat of what snugug said but in more detail

my process is:

Create my subtheme using omega tools and drush by typing this into command line

Duplicate my css directory in the subtheme and rename it scss

Rename all the files in scss directory by replacing .css with .scss
(Anyone know a quick command line way to do this? I have been doing it manually bc that seems faster)

so that the file names are now:

Initiate a compass project

Remove the stylesheets and sass directories that are created by compass init

Create images and js directory

Edit config.rb like this:

then have compass watch for changes in your scss files

Hope this helps!

We're all saying the same thing in different ways.

Since I set up Compass before I installed the Drush plug-in I used compass init [path/to/theme] and renamed the stuff and edited config.rb

abelb gives a great step-by-step process - I wonder if I can run compass outside its directory on my local Windows dev - but drush compass init should work

@snugug - the Drush make reference was for installing the Basic theme with Compass rapidly

[I know, why do I use Windows blahblah - it's because I like to bug the Drush maintainers! Actually, until the large majority of people DON'T use Windows, I prefer to test everything on Windows first]

{note to the Drush team: I just got Drush working in Cygwin, but not sure that's an improvement over using it in the Windows terminal}

Let's do a BoF at Drupalcamp NJ on 2/4

Proposed BoF: Compass/SASS/Omega AND a Doc Sprint for the Drush Compass plugin: http://drupal.org/node/1421726#comment-5555034

1:30PM - 2:30PM After lunch following the Omega session

@Snugug When I said "IMO your patch tries to do too much to be publicly useful" I meant it's generally not useful to the community to patch/hack another Project to fit your specific needs. In fact your patch may have been useful to you at one point, but it is out of date and unusable. How does that make it "best practices"?

I admire your goal of creating a Compass + SASS responsive theme that is less complex and more lightweight than Omega, but that doesn't answer best practices for Omega + Compass, it suggests an alternative.

The BoF served a useful purpose, I do not think the participants were even ready to go beyond learning how to install Compass, there were some in NYC who did not attend who suggested a BoF organized around best practices for Omega + Compass. And I was able to do my own doc sprint on the Drush Compass plugin.

Why use Drush with Compass? I think the best reason is that Drush knows the path to the Compass project by giving it the theme name. Also, the Compass commands are registered with Drush, which means you don't have to invoke compass directly from the command line, when you are already using Drush eg drush compile [my_theme]

Sasson ships a PHamlP sass compiler built-in, I wonder if it would be possible to chain them both in a parent-sub-theme and enjoy both.
I'll try to find the time to see how possible this is and report back here.

There's already a drush compass-compile [theme_name] command available through the Compass module http://drupal.org/project/compass

If that is the case, we probably don't need ANOTHER Compass integration since the most common command after installation would be "compass compile"

I wonder, has anybody measured the processing used by compass watch ?

@snugug I'm not interested in fighting with anybody on this thread. I don't understand why you take each of my comments as personal affronts.

I said the Compass/SASS BoF served a good purpose for the people who attended, you, and me - what more do you want me to say?

I understand what compass watch does and in the comment to which you replied I asked if anybody actually had metrics for its resource use. If you're not actively editing your css, but you go in to make a change, then it seems that compass compile makes more sense for an instance.

If you want to contribute a patch to the Compass module that adds drush compass watch support I'm sure it would be welcome, but you don't want to use drush for compass anyway, so there's no need to comment on the decision of someone who has contributed a useful extension of drush to compile compass.

I would like this thread to continue as a discussion of Omega + Compass Best Practices - as in the title of the OP. You have made it clear you do not like Omega ("I'm not a fan of Omega"). You also should not assume that I did not listen "the 4 or 5 times I told you exactly what that patch was meant to do" - I just was not interested.

If you want to have an argument with someone else, please take it somewhere else.

‘Sir Drupal of Drupingtown, protector of all things Drupal-ly’

...to this thread. I attended many SASS/Compass-related sessions and BOFs at DrupalCon Denver 2012 as well as this (now past) summer's DrupalCampWI (in Madison, WI). I'm looking forward to getting my hands dirty in Drupal/SASS/Compass theme code very soon and greatly appreciate the info and detail in this thread.

Thanks,
@webuxr

Hi All, I have been trying to use the instructions that Mark123 added to the Omega Theming Guide but have not been able to get the Watch or Compile to work. As I have tried it several different ways I
have seen several responses such as nothing to compile, if this is a new project you may have forgotten to include a directory path. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Turns out I had to run the compass init command and all was good.