'grunt compass' throwing error that it's not in the system PATH

Question

I'm pretty new to using grunt, compass, and sass and am having trouble getting it to work. I have a Redhat installation with Drupal 7 and when I try to run 'grunt compass' from within the site's theme directory I get the following error:

Running "compass:dist" (compass) task
Warning: You need to have Ruby and Compass installed and in your system PATH for this task     to work. More info: https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-compass Use --force to continue.

Aborted due to warnings.

I've installed Grunt, Bower, and used 'bundle install' to install the needed gems. When I run 'gem list' I get the following:

bigdecimal (1.2.4)
breakpoint (2.0.7)
bundler (1.6.2)
bundler-unload (1.0.2)
chunky_png (1.3.1)
compass (0.12.6)
compass-normalize (1.4.3)
executable-hooks (1.3.1)
fssm (0.2.10)
gem-wrappers (1.2.4)
io-console (0.4.2)
json (1.8.1)
kss (0.5.0)
minitest (4.7.5)
psych (2.0.3)
rake (10.1.0)
rdoc (4.1.0)
ruby (0.1.0)
rubygems-bundler (1.4.3)
rubygems-update (2.2.2)
rvm (1.11.3.9)
sass (3.2.19)
test-unit (2.1.1.0)
zurb-foundation (4.3.2)

So it seems that I have all of the needed gems. I then looked at my PATH settings via 'echo $PATH' and got the following:

/home/ec2-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/home/ec2-user/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1@global/bin:/home/ec2-user/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.1/bin:/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/aws/bin:/home/ec2-user/bin:/home/ec2-user/.rvm/bin

I looked into the paths and see that in /usr/bin I have ruby2.0 and in /home/ec2-user/bin I have compass so the installations seem to be in the system PATH.

When I run 'ruby2.0' from the command line I get the following:

/usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/ext/builder.rb:12:in `<class:Builder>':  uninitialized constant Gem::UserInteraction (NameError)
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/ext/builder.rb:10:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/ext.rb:13:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:1431:in `build_extensions'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/stub_specification.rb:60:in `build_extensions'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/basic_specification.rb:56:in `contains_requirable_file?'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:925:in `block in    find_inactive_by_path'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `each'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `find'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `find_inactive_by_path'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems.rb:185:in `try_activate'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:132:in `rescue in require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:144:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/user_interaction.rb:8:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/config_file.rb:7:in `<top (required)>'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:55:in `require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:1430:in `build_extensions'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/stub_specification.rb:60:in `build_extensions'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/basic_specification.rb:56:in `contains_requirable_file?'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:925:in `block in find_inactive_by_path'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `each'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `find'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/specification.rb:924:in `find_inactive_by_path'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems.rb:185:in `try_activate'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:132:in `rescue in require'
from /usr/local/share/ruby/site_ruby/2.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_require.rb:144:in `require'
from <internal:abrt_prelude>:2:in `<compiled>'

When I run simply 'ruby' nothing ever happens. Is 'grunt compass' looking to find 'ruby' and instead I have 'ruby2.0'? Do I need to create a symlink with ruby -> ruby2.0?

When I run 'compass' from the command line I get:

Usage: compass help [command]

Description:
  The Compass Stylesheet Authoring Framework helps you
  build and maintain your stylesheets and makes it easy
  for you to use stylesheet libraries provided by others.

Etc.

Any thoughts would be appreciated

Answer 1

I've done some researching on this and the following worked for me...

If you have a windows build with Ruby and Compass installed via CLI then try;

• Control Panel > System > Advanced system settings
• Advanced > Environment Variables
• Under System variables search for the 'path' variable which should have a value
• Finally click edit and add ;C:\Ruby193\bin at the very end of the Variable value.

This should do the trick.

Note that ;C:\Ruby193\bin refers to the installation of Ruby > Compass on your machine.

If you have a Mac build then perhaps a similar version of fix could work for Mac but I couldn't map that for you, a bit of Googling might help...

Answer 2

grunt-contrib-compass has a bundleExec option that makes the magic. With bundle it will load the gems installed using bundle install. Just set bundleExec: true

https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-compass#bundleexec

Answer 3

grunt compass looks for a ruby gem. In your case 'compass -v' gives no error so the compass part works fine. outside this, it doesn't depend on any other component of ruby.

Now that compass is ready, grunt compass also looks for a npm module grunt-contrib-compass which you would find reference of in a package.json file. If you do a npm install this npm package gets installed and I believe it should make grunt compass work.