civet 2.0.3

Civet
=====


(Picture credit: [Leendertz](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak#mediaviewer/File:Luwak-Katze_in_Kepahiang.jpg))

Civet precompiles asset files (such as Sass, CoffeeScript and ECMAScript 6) in
your Django project when you use the `runserver` command. It will also watch
the file changes for you. Therefore, you can edit your asset files and expect
`runserver` to recompile those files upon save, just like it how restarts the
app server when you make changes to your Python source code


Usage
-----

In your `settings.py`, add Civet to your `INSTALLED_APPS` setting.
In Django 1.6 and before, add it right after
`django.contrib.staticfiles`. In Django 1.7 and later, add it
before `django.contrib.staticfiles`:

```python
INSTALLED_APPS = (
# ...
# 'civet', # Uncomment for Django 1.7 and later
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
# 'civet', # Uncomment for Django 1.6 and earlier
# ...
)
```

Then add a `CIVET_PRECOMPILED_ASSET_DIR` setting that tells Civet where to
put the precompiled assets. For example:

CIVET_PRECOMPILED_ASSET_DIR = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'precompiled_assets')

That's it. Once set up, each time you use `manage.py runserver`, Civet will
first check to see if there are new Sass and CoffeeScript files that need
precompiling. It will also start watch for file changes.


Asset Versions Supported
----------------------------------------

Civet is known to work with the following compilers:

* Sass 3.2.5+ and Compass 0.12.2+
* CoffeeScript 1.6.3+
* Babel 6.3.17+


"But We Only Use Sass (or CoffeeScript)"
----------------------------------------

You can choose which compilers Civet uses (and add your own) via a setting:

```python
CIVET_COMPILER_CLASSES = (
civet.compilers.es6.ES6Compiler,
)
```


Customizable Options
--------------------

By default, Civet looks for `coffee`, `sass`, and `babel` in your `PATH`
environment varible. If you want to use specific paths, you can put these in
your `settings.py`:

# The paths here are just examples
CIVET_COFFEE_BIN = '/opt/local/bin/coffee'
CIVET_SASS_BIN = '/opt/local/bin/sass'
CIVET_BABEL_BIN = '/opt/local/bin/babel'

For Sass, a lot of people use [Bundler](http://bundler.io/) to manage their
Ruby command-line tools. This can be especially useful if you also use
libaries like Compass and want to lock down their versions. Bundler requires
you to set up a `Gemfile`. To use Bundler to run Sass, add this in your
`settings.py`:

CIVET_BUNDLE_GEMFILE = '/some/where/Gemfile'

Please note that `CIVET_BUNDLE_GEMFILE` and `CIVET_SASS_BIN` must not be set
at the same time. If both are set, Civet will raise an error. Also, by
default, Civet looks for the tool `bundle` in your `PATH`. If you want to
use a specific path, set `CIVET_BUNDLE_BIN` in your `settings.py`.

Finally, if you want to use additional CoffeeScript or Sass compiling options,
add these to your `settings.py`. Here are the default values Civet uses:

CIVET_COFFEE_SCRIPT_ARGUMENTS = ('--compile', '--map')
CIVET_SASS_ARGUMENTS = ()

If you want to, for example, use Compass with Sass, use:

CIVET_SASS_ARGUMENTS = ('--compass',)

You can also define patterns (files or directories) for Civet to ignore by
setting:

# As an exmaple, this will cause Civet to ignore files with 'coffee' in the
# name or path.
CIVET_IGNORE_PATTERNS = ['coffee']

This gets extended into the ignore_patterns list defined in
`django.contrib.staticfiles.management.commands.collectstatic`.

You can also define staticfile directories you want Civet to ignore by setting:

# This will cause Civet to ignore files located in 'bower_components' or
# 'node_modules' even if those folders are included in STATICFILES_DIRS.
CIVET_IGNORE_DIRS = ['bower_components', 'node_modules']


This is particularly useful when using a package manager such as [Bower](http://bower.io/)
or [NPM](https://www.npmjs.com/). These managers often install packages that
include their own build systems, configurations, and files that are incompatible
with how Civet compiles assets.

For ES6, you can specify the NODE_PATH used for babel by setting
`CIVET_ES6_NODE_PATH`.


Recompile Everything
--------------------

To recompile everything, just quit the server, delete the entire
`CIVET_PRECOMPILED_ASSET_DIR` directory, and use the `runserver` command
again.


Sample Project
--------------

We have included a sample project in `testsite/` to demonstrate how Civet
works with Django.


Motivation
----------

We have developed Civet to solve the following problems:

1. It is too cumbersome to ask all our developers to remember using
`coffee -w` and `sass -w` every time they use `runserver`.

2. We want our CoffeeScript and Sass assets to be precompiled. It makes no
sense to compile them on the fly as we serve static assets. Plus, Sass
files that have a lot of includes can take a long time to process.
At one point we had a Sass file that took 6 seconds to compile. We don't
want our developers to wait for 6 seconds every time they reload a page.

3. Django's static file layout requires Sass and CoffeeScript to watch
for separate directories. We simply can't have them watch the top-level
directory and call it a day. It is very cumbersome, however, to have
Sass compiler watch multiple directories, and the option for
multi-directory watch simply doesn't exist in the CoffeeScript compiler.

4. We have a lot of CoffeeScript files, and on OS X that number exceeds the
default maximum number of files that node.js (on which the official
CoffeeScript compiler is based on) can watch. (See
[this issue](https://github.com/joyent/node/issues/2479) for details.)


About the Name
--------------

Civet is "a slender nocturnal carnivorous mammal" (according to *New Oxford
American Dictionary*) that also produces
[kopi luwak](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak) by ingesting coffee
beans. I was looking for a cheeky (sassy) project name that has to do with
coffee, and this comes to mind. Disclaimer: I have no idea what kopi luwak
tastes like, and no animal is harmed during the development of this plug-in.