uPortal IRC Logs-2012-04-27

Owned by Apereo Infrastructure
Last updated: Apr 27, 2012
3 min read

[14:12:36 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> would it be appropriate to minify all the CSS in uPortal generated by SASS? It would make it more obvious that those files shouldn't be edited.

[14:13:13 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> Then if an implementer does not want to use SASS, we could supply the unminified by request.

[14:16:14 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> request from who and who answers (smile)

[14:16:56 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> ha

[14:17:33 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> in order of preference I'd like to see:

[14:17:52 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> 1. someone figure out how to have SASS->CSS run as part of the uportal-war maven build

[14:17:56 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> yep

[14:18:35 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> 2. Automatically add a giant warning comment at the top of the css files generated by SASS saying that the file in generated with a link to a SASS docs page and a link on how to regen the CSS files

[14:18:36 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> 1. is required. I don't have the expertise to say if it is possible or not.

[14:18:44 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> 3. Manually maintain comment described by 2

[14:18:57 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> #2 is what I am working on now

[14:19:52 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1751479/sass-implementation-for-java

[14:20:00 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that looks interesting if you're willing to try it out

[14:20:58 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> https://github.com/darrinholst/sass-java

[14:21:00 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that looks good too

[14:22:33 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> good news.

[14:22:38 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> that github link looks really good

[14:22:58 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> if it works we can work on getting it into repo1 since we don't want 3rd party repos in the uportal pom

[14:23:44 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> "Don't let those ruby devs have all the fun". love it.

[14:26:28 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> hrm

[14:26:34 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so that would need some work

[14:26:44 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> since we don't want that to be a runtime thing

[14:26:48 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but a maven build time thing

[14:27:00 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> you probably want to check with athena about writing a maven plugin

[14:27:12 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> this little filter is simple enough

[14:27:26 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> it could easily be turned into a maven plugin and added to the uportal-war config

[14:27:58 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> EricDalquist: what are you seeing that is runtime?

[14:28:07 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> it is a servlet filter

[14:28:15 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> the maven bit is just how to add this as a project dependency

[14:28:29 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so you configure this fitler and it generates your CSS from SASS when it is requested

[14:28:38 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> we'd want to generate the CSS at build time via a maven plugin

[14:28:39 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> which this is not

[14:28:50 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but this does demo how to call the SASS ruby script from java code

[14:29:18 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> I don't know why someone would set off to build a runtime SASS compiler

[14:29:34 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> right

[14:29:45 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> the code is pretty terrible too

[14:30:30 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> but what he is doing is pretty straight forward

[14:30:39 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> he generates a ruby script here: https://github.com/darrinholst/sass-java/blob/master/src/main/java/com/sass_lang/SassCompilingFilter.java#L98

[14:30:56 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> and runs it here: https://github.com/darrinholst/sass-java/blob/master/src/main/java/com/sass_lang/SassCompilingFilter.java#L60

[14:31:35 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> and the jruby and sass-gems dependencies he references in the project pom provide the Ruby/SASS support needed: https://github.com/darrinholst/sass-java/blob/master/pom.xml#L38

[14:31:48 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> so those three bits need to be translated into a little SASS maven plugin

[14:34:18 CDT(-0500)] <EricDalquist> finding lots of partial attempts at it: https://github.com/ccustine/sass4j

[15:27:08 CDT(-0500)] <athena> just got back - will take a few minutes to read through the above

[15:37:16 CDT(-0500)] <athena> hey peter

[15:37:21 CDT(-0500)] <athena> thanks for all the comemnt

[15:37:23 CDT(-0500)] <athena> er, comments

[15:37:34 CDT(-0500)] <athena> yes, i agree that this is currently a problem and it's something i've been worried about

[15:37:39 CDT(-0500)] <athena> i can certainly help w/ the maven plugin side of this

[15:37:58 CDT(-0500)] <athena> what i need is a UX person to work with (hey, you!) to understand exactly what we need

[15:38:36 CDT(-0500)] <athena> i'm concerned that the current build probably doesn't have a structure that accommodates an automated build and we may need to make some changes

[15:38:46 CDT(-0500)] <athena> peterjhart: have you figured out how to update each skin via sass?

[15:39:26 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> yep

[15:39:50 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> working on committing some style changes that were only made to the css, then overwritten

[15:40:32 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> and then a refactor of the SASS scripts

[15:46:47 CDT(-0500)] <athena> sounds terrific, thank you

[15:47:05 CDT(-0500)] <athena> i'll look at the resources eric linked and see what we can do about automating the build

[16:12:30 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> I just created UP-3456 and I will commit a solution soon.

[19:20:13 CDT(-0500)] <peterjhart> Submitted pull request for UP-3456. I never read comments, but perhaps others will (wink)