Sharing Patterns

To share a pattern you must release a compass plugin. The process of making a compass plugin is not well documented yet. If you want to make one, please send me an email and we’ll work together on it. If you copy the 960.gs plugin that would make a pretty good starting point.

The easiest way to distribute your compass plugin is via a gem hosted on github. Once you’ve done that, the user would then need to do the following steps:

$ sudo gem install your_github_user_name-your_plugin_name
$ compass -c -r your_plugin_library_name
   create config.rb
$ compass -f your_framework_name -p your_pattern_name

Most plugins provide a project pattern directory, but you needn’t provide a project pattern directory unless you want folks to be able to be able to get started with your plugin at project creation time.

Once you have your plugin, you make a pattern by adding a directory to the templates directory. The only requirement for a pattern template directory is that it has a manifest.rb file that tells compass what files should be installed. See the blueprint buttons template directory for an example.