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CSS Sass Basics (retired) Getting Started with Sass Installing and Using Sass

Can't install Sass

I'm getting the error:

You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.

2 Answers

Try running sudo gem install sass. You'll have to enter your password to confirm the installation as you'll be entering the superuser mode.

Alternatively you may want to consider installing something like rvm or rbenv both of which will manage gemsets in your user directory instead of at a system level. I think installing rbenv is covered in this video.

And using rvm or rbenv is a much better solution in the long run.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

> using rvm or rbenv is a much better solution in the long run.

Better for whom?

I think rvm might be added complexity for designers using Sass who won't be writingany Ruby code.

There are plenty of gems which have nothing to do with coding, they're just useful tools. Even when doing pure design work, sometimes you end up having to balance different versions of gems.

There are a lot of companies out there that fully expect frontend devs to be capable of running complex tools in the command line. Using rvm is hardly more complicated than using grunt or gulp which have become de facto industry standards. The frontend development is becoming more and more complex, and sadly, anyone who truly wants to master it will have to master tools such as these.

Dino Paškvan what are the issues with using sudo? I was able to do that, but I was reading in StackOverflow that I shoudn't be doing that since it'll override my system's Ruby installation. I'll try to figure out rvm or rbenv, but I wanted to more fully understand what might happen now that I've installed Sass using sudo.

Using sudo in this case does nothing to your system's Ruby installation. You're just installing a gem and since the gem command doesn't have write access rights for the folder where gems are installed, you're allowing it to do so with sudo.

As long as the only thing you've done was installing a gem, you'll be fine.

If you choose to set up rvm or rbenv, you won't have to mess with sudo anymore, and you'll be able to have multiple versions of Ruby installed.

James Barnett
James Barnett
39,199 Points

Justine Lam -

If you are new the to using the console I'd check out the first badge in console foundations to get familiar with moving around using the command line.

You also might be interested in using an app to Install Sass like Scout