Overview

Boussole is working on per-project configuration, it means all your Sass sources to compile have to be organized in the same directory considered as the sources directory. Obviously you can organize them in multiple sub-directories within your sources directory.

Your project can rely on some Sass libraries that must be out of the source directory to be defined in option LIBRARY_PATHS.

Boussole does not really handle itself compilation, this is the role of libsass-python. But for watch mode Boussole needs to inspect your Sass sources and so can raise some errors if they are invalid. These errors will be almost only about your @import rules.

Boussole is builded following Sass references and all your Sass sources and libraries compatibles with libsass should be safe to compile.

Project configuration

A project configuration lives in a file which default expected name is boussole.json (JSON backend) or boussole.yml (YAML backend).

Backend format

There is actually two supported backend format: JSON and YAML. Each of backend format expect is own default filename.

However you can ask for a specific backend from command line use argument --backend, value can be either json or yaml.

Discovering

Boussole is able to discover your settings file if you don’t explicitely give it as command argument with --config option.

Discovering is allways performed from current directory and will try to find a settings file using available backend default filename.

Such as if you have a boussole.yml in your current directory, Boussole will assume it’s your settings file to open. JSON backend is the first one to be checked so if you have both boussole.json and boussole.yml in your current directory, the JSON will be used.

You may possibly enforce a single backend to be used in discovery using the --backend option.

Finally, if you give an explicit settings file path with --config there will be no discovering, Boussole will just open it directly.

Sample

Here is a full sample of available settings for project configuration with JSON format:

{
    "SOURCES_PATH": "/home/foo",
    "LIBRARY_PATHS": [
        "/home/lib1",
        "/home/lib2"
    ],
    "TARGET_PATH": "/home/bar",
    "OUTPUT_STYLES": "nested",
    "HASH_SUFFIX": null,
    "SOURCE_COMMENTS": false,
    "SOURCE_MAP": false,
    "EXCLUDES": [
        "*/*.backup.scss",
        "/home/lib2"
    ]
}

References

Note

Default values are referenced as Python values, you will need to adapt them according to the backend format you are using.

SOURCES_PATH

  • Default: None

  • Type: string

  • Required: True

Path to the directory containing your project Sass sources to compile.

LIBRARY_PATHS

  • Default: []

  • Type: list

  • Required: False

A list of paths (string) to your library imported from your Sass sources. Never try to add your source dir as a library and vice versa, this will trouble resolver and compiler.

If you plan to use some Sass libraries installed from Npm, just add the path to node_modules directory, then you will be able to import them from your sources.

However, some project may install hundreds of npm packages which may involve a little performance loss with the watcher mode on some systems.

TARGET_PATH

  • Default: None

  • Type: string

  • Required: True

Directory path where will be writed your compiled Sass sources.

OUTPUT_STYLES

  • Default: nested

  • Type: string

  • Required: False

Keyword of output style type used to compile your Sass sources. Can be either compact, expanded, nested or compressed.

HASH_SUFFIX

  • Default: None

  • Type: None or boolean or string

  • Required: False

If enabled this option will add a hash between file name and file extension. It have different behavior depending given value:

  • If it is an empty string, None or False, this option is disabled. This is the default value;

  • If value is :blake2, a hash will be added using “blake2” for a length of 20 characters (almost guaranteed to be unique);

  • If value is :uuid, a hash will be added using “uuid4” with for a length of 32 characters (guaranteed to be unique);

  • If True, assume to use the default hash engine which is :blake2;

  • If it is a string that do not match any hash engine name, it will just be added as it;

For example for a foo.css file to build with this option set to :blake2, the built file will be foo.6fa1d8fcfd719046d762.css.

Generated hashes (with “blake2” or “uuid4”) will change on each compile except in watch mode where the hash will be the same during your watch session (if you break the watch mode then launch it again the hash will change).

Note

This option is mostly useful for production builds, remember that each time you compile sources to CSS their filename will change.

Also Boussole is not aware of previously built files so with this option enabled you will need to care about cleaning files with a hash.

SOURCE_COMMENTS

  • Default: False

  • Type: boolean

  • Required: False

If True, comments about source lines will be added to each rule in resulted CSS from compile.

SOURCE_MAP

  • Default: False

  • Type: boolean

  • Required: False

If True, generate a source map for each compiled file. Source map filename will be the same that compiled file but with extension changed to .map. The source map file is allways created in the same directory than CSS file.

If HASH_SUFFIX is enabled, the source map filename will also adopt the hash.

EXCLUDES

  • Default: []

  • Type: list

  • Required: False

A list of glob pattern (string) to exclude some paths/files from compile. Remember these pattern are allways matched against relative paths (from project directory).

Help

You can read help about global options with:

boussole -h

And you can reach help about command options using:

boussole [command name] -h

Start a new project

Create directory and configuration file for a new project. Although you can create your project manually, this is an easy helper to do it and avoid forgetting some details.

Without arguments, command will prompt you to fill required values but you can also directly feed these values from arguments, see command help for details.

Usage

boussole startproject

Compile

Compile simply launch compiler on every eligible Sass source from your SOURCES_PATH directory.

Usage

boussole compile

Watch

Watcher will constantly watch about changes on files in your SOURCES_PATH directory and LIBRARY_PATHS paths.

When an event occurs, it will compile eligible sources from the file itself to its dependencies.

Managed events can be :

  • File creation;

  • File modification;

  • File move;

  • File deletion.

Note

Event about directories (like directory creation or moving) are ignored.

Note

Compile errors won’t break the watcher so you can resolve them and try again to compile.

Usage

boussole watch

Note

Default behavior is to use the Watchdog native platform observer. It may not work for all environments (like on shared directories through network or Virtual machine), in this case use the --poll to use the Watchdog polling observer instead of the default one.

Boussole has its own internal code to inspect Sass sources to be aware of sources paths it has to watch for.

In some rare circumstances, some source inspection may lead to issues where compile command can build your sources but can fails with watch command because the latter need to inspect sources to be able to find dependencies and choke on unclear path resolution.

These unclear paths are almost allways due to some Sass libraries trying to import components using a relative path outside of itself like with ../. This is often the case with libraries that have been made to be included in your main scss directory.