Rails 3.1 Asset Pipeline

A talk on Rails 3.1 (pre-release, talk given before rails 3.1 was released) on how the new asset pipeline will work.

Transcript

1. Rails 3.1 Asset Pipeline Jeremy Olliver
2. Rails 3.1 Release Schedule • August 8th: Rails 3.1.0.rc6 • August 22nd: Rails 3.1.0
3. Native Support for • Sass • Coffeescript • asset packaging/minification/compression • cache friendly static filenames (hash in filename not mtime querystring)
4. Assets Directory Structure app assets javascripts stylesheets images optional: lib/assets (non-application specific assets) vendor/assets (third party assets, css/js plugins etc)
5. How Does it Work? • manifest files specify js/css files to load • app/assets/javascripts/application.js • app/assets/stylesheets/application.css • Only needs changing for specifying load order • Picks up coffeescript, javascript, css, and sass files
6. Coffeescript / JS compilation • provided through sprockets and execjs • Need to include a javascript runtime such as node.js or a native ruby implementation such as gems ‘therubyracer’ or ‘mustang’
7. Sass / Compass / Referencing assets • use compass ‘rails31’ branch • use sass (scss) it’s awesome • referencing assets/images requires erb and asset_path helper
8. Deployment • updated capistrano version coming up • in the meantime: • rake assets:precompile RAILS_ENV=production • compiles to public/assets