SASS on Sublime Text 3 - [Decode error - output not utf-8]

Question

I've been trying to use sass in sublime text 3 today and for that I installed Ruby, Ruby SASS gem and the Sublime packages Sass and Sass Build. All seems to be working well but when I try to build the css file (using the Sass Build package) I get this weird error:

[Decode error - output not utf-8]
[Finished in 0.1s with exit code 1]
[cmd: ['sass', '--update', 'F:\\Program Files (x86)\\wamp\\www\\singlepage\\wp-content\\themes\\manaca\\style.scss:F:\\Program Files (x86)\\wamp\\www\\singlepage\\wp-content\\themes\\manaca/style.css', '--stop-on-error', '--no-cache', '--style', 'compressed']]
[dir: F:\Program Files (x86)\wamp\www\singlepage\wp-content\themes\manaca]
[path: C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common;C:\Windows\system32;C:\Windows;C:\Windows\System32\Wbem;C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\;F:\Program Files (x86)\MacType;C:\Program Files\Common Files\Autodesk Shared\;C:\Program Files (x86)\Autodesk\Backburner\]

And when I try to build the compressed CSS (from the same package) it simply returns

[Decode error - output not utf-8]
[Finished in 0.1s]

What's been bugging me is the crazy file paths returned in the last line (shouldn't even be searching in C: )

The other thing I've been researching about is the output not utf-8 thing. Even if I specify the charset on my sass (or scss) file, the problem lingers.

Anyway, I appreciate any type of help I can get.

Answer 1

"shell": true - this is the key.

If I try build-system like this (on WinXP):

{
    "cmd": ["ant", "-f", "project-build.xml"],
    "working_dir": "${project_path}"
}

I get: [Decode error - output not utf-8]
because cmd should be "ant.bat" instead. Sublime is looking for file exacly called ant and encoding of "file does not exist" message is not utf-8. When I use shell like this:

{
    "cmd": ["ant", "-f", "project-build.xml"],
    "working_dir": "${project_path}",
    "shell": true
}

everything works fine (even without "windows": { "cmd": ....} ) because shell searches for ant.exe and then ant.bat.

Answer 2

I've worked around the problem.

The path thing was a missing step of my Ruby installation on Windows. I needed to register Ruby's path in Environment Variables.

But still the package Sass Build wasn't working so I opened cmd and told Sass to watch the file, inside my website folder:

cd "program files (x86)\..\mysite"
sass --watch style.scss:style.css --style compact --no-cache

Now every time I save the style.scss file the css file is updated properly.

Hope that clarifies the process to anyone else!

Answer 3

Just a reference for people who had similar problem and the accepted answer didn't help:

I had a similar error, in my case I had to install python and add it to the PATH environment variable.

Answer 4

add ruby to envirement variable PATH.

Answer 5

I've got this error when I open Sublime Text from a console window. Open Sublime from a normal shortcut.

Answer 6

Just in case someone else comes across this on a different matter, I was building a project in openCL (using C API not C++) and encountered this error.

Turns out I hadn't allocated enough memory for the string to hold the program build log.