Sass Basics, Where to Start?

Thanks so much Luke ! a lot of the time it can be hard to begin certain course lessons because it is difficult to navigate new applications and the problems that may arise. You have saved me a lot of time I will definitely use Codepen for Sass!

Ok so I open Terminal on my Macbook , and type in as instructed

gem install sass

and hit enter or return.

Then a message that said something about retreiving (100%) appeared and underneath was an error message.

Since then (because nothing seemed to be happening) I tried "gem install sass" 2 or 3 times but only the error message appears now

Thank you for uploading those messages!

It looks as if it's a simple permission error. Try running:

sudo gem install sass

This will allow gem to write the files necessary to install Sass on your machine.

Thanks for the quick response I typed in with "sudo", Is this a normal message

WARNING: Improper use of the sudo command could lead to data loss
or the deletion of important system files. Please double-check your
typing when using sudo. Type "man sudo" for more information.

To proceed, enter your password, or type Ctrl-C to abort.

Password:

Yes!

This is the prompt where you will enter your administrator password. The message is only letting you know that when using super user (sudo), you have unrestricted access to edit or delete any files on your system.

Only problem now is that it freezes ! The password cannot be typed because the Terminal becomes unresponsive after I type the command and the Error displays...

Hi Teame,

The sudo prompt doesn't actually freeze even though it looks like it does, what happens is it waits for you to type in something and press enter as passwords in POSIX systems are never shown to the user for security purposes in the terminal.

Ok so I seemed to have installed "1 gem" but what does this mean?

+1 for Chris Upjohn

That means you have installed Sass!

Verify the install by typing "sass -v" into your terminal.

This means that the gem you requested to have installed should now exist in your bin directory, on OS X you can check if this is true by typing in the below.

which sass
// Results in something like /usr/bin/sass

This path may be different for you as I use Homebrew which puts gems in a different location but the general gist of it is the same, you can also ensure sass is working by using the following command.

sass -v
// Should return Sass 3.4.5 (Selective Steve)

You will need to place a space between "sass" and "-v".

sass is the command, -v is the flag that requests it to return the current version.

thanks that worked! where do I go from here?

Sass 3.4.5 (Selective Steve)

Perfect! Glad that all worked out for you.

Now you can follow along with any of the Sass lessons on Treehouse. It also never hurts to take a look at the Sass Documentation.

Sass isn't an visual application, is an executable program that you run from your terminal. Matt posted a link above which tells you how to use it in terminal and different configuration options.

Is this why earlier the "title" of the Terminal would change from bash to Ruby? Which means I can write or code Sass under the Terminal?

No, you will still write your Sass using your text editor. The Sass program running in the terminal will only compile your Sass files into CSS files the browser can read.

Anytime! Glad I was able to help.

The video lessons do a great job at getting you up to speed very quickly. It will all make much more sense after watching a few.