Changes to imported stylus sheet does not cause parent to re-generate.

[MarkSweet]

Hello. It appears that something has changed in the way that Docpad regenerates the project when a file is saved.

Docpad version 6.63.2

My project has a main stylus style sheet and several imported styl documents in a sub directory. When the main style sheet is saved, the project regenerates and all changes are applied. When I save a change in one of the imported stylus documents the project regenerates but no changes are applied to the project.

When I check the out directory, I see that Docpad has changed the styl document, but the main stylesheet has not imported those changes. In order for me to apply any changes to an imported document, I have to save that document, and then save the main style sheet.

I assume that this has something to do with the changes in Docpad's latest update, as I have an older project running Docpad 6.59.6 and this project has no issues.

[balupton]

Looking at the source, you're correct.

This DocPad change is what did it:

v6.62.0 January 28, 2014
Stylesheets are more effeciently generated
Files with the outExtension: 'css' are now the only ones included in the stylesheet collection
Stylesheets no longer have referencesOthers to true on them by default, this is now left up to plugin authors to do

As the stylus plugin has not been updated to take this into account, whereas some of the others have been:

                # Add Reference Others if this document does
                # As lesscss concats imports
                file.setMetaDefaults('referencesOthers': true)  if opts.content.indexOf('@import') isnt -1

One question though, it seems this was not applied to stylus as stylus does not seem to concat files together. Is this correct? As if it doesn't need to concat files, then this is not an issue. Is there anything special about your configuration that is causing concatenation to occur?

[MarkSweet]

@balupton

There is nothing special about my configuration. I am using the standard set up with a basic coffee file. My main CSS file is called custom.css.styl. In this file I have my global settings. I then use stylus @import to bring in my other styles for different sections of the site. They are all in a sub folder called styl.

For example,
/css
custom.css.styl
styl
--nav.styl
--header.styl
--vari.styl

When ever I make a change to vari.styl that change is watched, and a new vari.styl will be in the out/css/styl directory but custom.css is not generated. I have to save that file afterwards to have the changes imported.

Before the update, if I made a change to vari.styl, that would cause custom.css.styl to also regenerate, and the changes would be imported then. It almost seems as though I would need a way to tell Docpad that a change to one particular file should cause another to update.

Is there a way to configure the stylus plugin to do this?

[balupton]

@MarkSweet

Is your project up on GitHub? As perhaps the best way to resolve this is to take a look.

As another stab at trying to explain the issue, if stylus compiles files which result output looks like this:

@import url("./nav.css")
@import url("./header.css")

Then there is no need for us to set the referencesOthers: true flag, as the documents are simply being referenced...

---

Actually... the use case of mixins and variables in remote stylesheets actually destroys this hypothesis making referencesOthers: true necessary for any import of the same pre-processor file (just not for plan importing css files, only for importing stylus files).

So yeah, I need to add that code into the stylus plugin and that should fix the issue.

[MarkSweet]

@balupton

That is exactly my case, using mixins and variables as well as bring in other site specific stylus files.
So, in my stylus files I use:

@import 'styl/variable.styl'
@import 'styl/mixin.styl'
@import 'styl/header.styl'

It is my understanding that stylus brings in those files, then processes all the information and outputs my css file.

By the way, I also tried @require as stylus allows for the use of both to import external files but that did not cause the generation either.

[RobLoach]

Don't think we need the toggle at all for LESS: docpad/docpad-plugin-less#12 ... Doesn't Styl compile the import for us as well?

[MarkSweet]

Yes, Stylus-plugin does compile the import . The problem is when a change is made to a styl document that get's imported to the main stylus file, Docpad will see the change in the imported file, but sense the main stylus document has not changed Docpad will not trigger stylus-plugin to recompile that document.

If I want to apply the styl changes, I have to edit /styl/variable.styl and then I have to load /main.css.styl and save that document as well. That will trigger the Stylus-plugin to compile the document, and bring in all the import's.

[roblafeve]

I was having this same issue. Placing the following code at the top of my main.css.styl fixed all the issues I was having (particularly with the livereload plugin). Wish this was made clearer in the the stylus plugin's documentation.

---
referencesOthers: true
---

[MarkSweet]

@roblafeve

Thank you very much, this works. I did not know that you could enter that data in a stylus document. Adding that to my main stylus sheet worked for me as well.
Thank you again.

[chrisabrams]

@roblafeve thank you so much - this was driving me crazy!

[balupton]

Which version is everyone running who's experiencing this?

[chrisabrams]

I'm on 2.5.0

[MarkSweet]

2.6 for me.

[balupton]

It probably just needs this line added docpad/docpad-plugin-sass@0b44c1f#diff-69f85055b0e68582326e50ecedd6635aR93