How does 'compass watch' work/how is it used with rails

Question

I have done compass create . and compass init rails whilst in my project directory. A few questions:

• I have placed my .sass files in public/stylesheets. Is this the right place to put them?
• When I run compass watch, it does not automatically compile these .sass files. I have to manually specify the files: compass watch public/stylesheets/myfile.sass etc. How do I get this working automatically?
• The files ie.css, print.css and screen.css have been placed in stylesheets/compiled. How do I remove these without them reappeareing after compilation?
• My own compiled .sass files are compiled to compiled/ts. Why are they in ts and not in compiled?

Many thanks in advance

---

Edit: Worked it out:

• No, put them in app/stylesheets/
• Works if you follow above
• Remove them from app/stylesheets/
• Do first answer and they will be put in compiled/

Answer 1

Compass uses a configuration file located in "config/compass.rb" which tells it where the important directories are. I think it knows to look in config/compass.rb because it searches a list of predefined directories for a compass.rb config file

Heres the config file I use for my Rails 3 projects

# This configuration file works with both the Compass command line tool and within Rails.
# Require any additional compass plugins here.
project_type = :rails
project_path = Compass::AppIntegration::Rails.root
# Set this to the root of your project when deployed:
http_path = "/"
css_dir = "public/stylesheets"
sass_dir = "app/stylesheets"
images_dir = "public/images"
environment = Compass::AppIntegration::Rails.env
# To enable relative paths to assets via compass helper functions. Uncomment:
# relative_assets = true
preferred_syntax = :sass

I generate this file by running the following command from the Rails root:

compass init rails --css-dir=public/stylesheets --sass-dir=app/stylesheets --images-dir=public/images -x sass --using blueprint/basic

This is the only command that I use to run compass, and I run it when generating my project through a rails template https://github.com/sid137/rails-templates/blob/master/rails3.rb . I constructed this command by reading through the compass help, and looking online, as I wanted to customize all of my compass setup. Now, I can immediately begin my projects with

compass watch .

or

compass compile .