Add more Compass tools/extensions by default

I use compass frequently but I'm never coding/theming on live sites so it makes no sense.
All of the compass/SASS tools I need are on my local machine.

It can be used as a local testing centre before actual production, and we have one, it is a replica of the production server so I can migrate sites back and forth using the hosting_remote_import modules useful for testing what will happen on module or core updates.

However, I don't do any development work on the local or production BOA instances as there is too much fuddle involved for this to be worth while. It's quite a process that slows the theming/coding process down. Though with a bit of work is achievable.

Cheers

I think a BOA DevShop should be developed

perhaps the Valkryie variant of Devshop pre-loaded with BOA platforms

and loaded with debug tools etc... possibly using the Quickstart / Drupalpro etc dev tool scripts

This thread is about Compass tools only. Please don't hijack.

Compass is in Quickstart AND Drupalpro

Thank you for raising this issue, jibize. I would very much like to see these tools become installed by default. Panopoly is my base distribution of choice and, for now, it has been making sense to use Radix as a starter-theme; I'm planning to use more and more SAAS/compass; and my workflow, as a designer/themer/front-end-developer, takes place mostly at the server, not on live sites but in clones... That's one of the major benefits of Ægir, as far as I'm concerned: making all the process of creating working copies and then migrating the production website so much more straightforward and time efficient.

OK, it gets promoted to our to-do list then. Thanks for the suggestion.

~Greg

it would be great if Aegir BOA had a DEV and STAGE and LIVE version of each platform, like a well known closed source cloud provider of Drupal hosting

perhaps Compass tools would be running by default on DEV, but optional on STAGE and switched off on LIVE

Here is a list of pretty common gems that I use on a BOA box for theme development:

• breakpoint
• chunky_png
• compass
• compass-960-plugin
• compass-h5bp
• compass-susy-plugin
• compass_radix
• compass_twitter_bootstrap
• fssm
• modular-scale
• sass
• sassy-math
• singularitygs
• susy
• zen-grids

There are definitely others, such as those required for Aurora, but this covers a high proportion of Drupal use cases in my experience.

I'm afraid that there is no definitive list of those extensions, and this list will never end, so maybe we should leave this for the server admin to decide which extensions he/she needs. And the same on the hosted BOA -- in fact we already install extensions when requested. Could you propose some "must have" extensions list with some not only subjective reasoning?

I think that's totally fair. Whats more, this could get into an endless version requirements cycle as well.

The base sass gem required for compass is truly sufficient from a "must have" perspective, IMO. Zen packages a sass-extension with the base 5.x theme so the zen-grids gem is truly optional. The others are specific to different styles of theming or specific themes, rather than an all encompassing CSS preprocessor like Sass.

That being said, with the current install process of updating compass only, the sass gem doesn't get updated (unless the minimum version dependency changes for compass). Could I propose a forced update of the sass gem as part of the compass update process to keep pace with their development (http://sass-lang.com/docs/yardoc/file.SASS_CHANGELOG.html)?

@niccolo -- Octopus already provides dev/stage/prod copies for both D6 and D7 generic platforms. You can also add any number of custom platforms. I don't think it is a good idea to duplicate by default all other platforms. But adding extra copies of all built-in platforms on demand as a feature in the Aegir would be nice. This needs separate feature request, though. By the way, it is not possible to restrict compass related tools per platform.

in drupalpro i thought it was folder based
would need to check again
http://compass-style.org/help/tutorials/command-line/

Hostmaster (Aegir) » Issues
Multiple enviroments per site?
https://drupal.org/node/669304

@niccolo - I can't see how this relates to the request here. Again, it is *not* possible and makes no sense to restrict anything like this on the BOA (system) level. You are free to use *any* platform you wish as a dev or stage or dev2, dev3, stage5, stage9 etc.

@mrP -- thanks for the feedback. Could you elaborate on "forced update of the sass gem as part of the compass update process"? or even propose a patch? :)

[EDIT] I guess you mean that we should run on update: gem update sass to get it updated, but maybe you mean something else/more?

While compass-aurora looks too complex to install/compile/manage in the limited shell context, the two other popular candidates (compass_radix and zurb-foundation) look both great and fairly safe to get them included by default: https://github.com/omega8cc/nginx-for-drupal/commit/6e7b5cced32cf5ff1114...

Thanks for all your suggestions so far!

You beat me to it :) Your commit is exactly what I had in mind.

I'll provide patches with recommendations next time to make it easier. Many, many thanks as always.

I'm reopening this because the system closed it as fixed do to no activity in 2 weeks and although this thread has been all over the place, it looks like the most relevant place to ask my follow-up question.

I'm running Aegir BOA-2.1.3 / Barracuda BOA-2.1.3 on my own Linode VPS and it appears that SASS and COMPASS are not installed (i.e which sass and which compass produce no result.) In fact, which ruby also produces no result

So am I to conclude that it is safe to install Ruby, SASS and COMPASS and any other gems we might want without screwing up my BOA or do I need to wait for the next stable release that has it?

Thanks for your help in advance!
Steve

Compass tools are an optional add-on and won't be installed unless instructed to do so. see https://github.com/omega8cc/nginx-for-drupal/blob/BOA-2.1.3/docs/NOTES.txt

Thanks mrP, but I do have _XTRAS_LIST=ALL set in my .barracuda.cnf and always have, but it does not appear that any of the Compass tools are installed.

I've been running this BOA server since before the Compass tools were added, so is there something I have to do to force this to happen or perhaps I am not properly looking for them.

Thanks for your help!
Steve

Compass tools, depending on the OS used, may not be in the path for root or any other user which is not a limited shell user. Switch to your lshell user and then type compass --version. If you will have any problems, please open separate issue.