Compass binary not found (the path should be exposed on theme settings)

Well, if "path to compass" has been set it should be used in place of the default value:

// Assuming we've stored the compass path on $settings_compass_path
if ($settings_compass_path){
  exec($setting_compass_path." version", $out, $rvalue);
else {
  exec("compass version", $out, $rvalue);
}

On my specific case I'm using Debian 6 and compass is not available on default repository. You've to install using gem. If your're using bash you've to manually set the gem path like:

PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/

But the owner of php/httpd process doesn't know that path.

We have two solutions:

1. set the PATH directly to the system user which own php/httpd and leave sasson to call "compass" assuming that the server knows where to find it
2. allow sasson to manually set the compass path

About your question "how many people would actually use that"... well... probably few because compass (and sasson) are not so common, but those few could be use Debian or even CentOS (another common web server which doesn't ship compass packages) and I believe that configuring compass PATH to php/httpd system user is worse than setting it to the sasson settings.

What do you think about?

Thanks for your attention :-)

Well, it should be good solution. If compass is available on the known paths everything works fine, otherwise the theme developer can change the value from a "settings" file. Not bad, it only needs to be clearly documented.

2 cents about security: setting the path from the configuration file is just a bi more secure than setting the variable from the UI because I suppose that the user who can set that variable from the UI probably have enough privileges to damage the entire website :-) :-) :-)

Anyway every solution is fine, the most important thing is to document it.

Thanks again Tsachi :-)