grunt cannot find compass command. Why not?

Question

I am trying to set up a node.js server on CentOS 7 using grunt and yeoman, but I am getting an error saying that the compass command cannot be found. I read this other posting about a similar error , but the other posting assumes you are using ruby on rails, which I am not. Also, the methods that I am testing come from this tutorial , and things stop working when I get to the point in the tutorial where it says to type grunt serve. I have made several additions to the tutorial to address error messages one by one, but the current error about compass does not seem to have a google-able answer.

What specific steps do I need to take to get grunt to be able to find and use compass?

Here is the current error which is causing grunt serve to fail:

Warning: Running "compass:server" (compass) task
Warning: Command failed: /bin/sh -c compass --version
/bin/sh: compass: command not found
 Use --force to continue.
Aborted due to warnings.

Here is the series of commands leading up to this problem:

First, I performed the following installation commands as root:

yum install -y nodejs
yum clean all && yum update
yum install -y gcc-c++ openssl-devel make
npm install -g express
npm install -g express-generator
npm install -g yo
npm install -g generator-angular
npm install -g bower
npm install -g nodemon
npm install -g grunt-cli  
npm install generator-karma 
npm install -g compass 
npm install -g grunt-contrib-compass  

Next, I switched to a non-root user account and ran the following commands:

cd /home/user/angular_apps 
mkdir /home/user/angular_apps/my_new_project && cd /home/user/angular_apps/my_new_project
mkdir /home/user/angular_apps/my_new_project/client  // will house angular and app code
mkdir /home/user/angular_apps/my_new_project/server  // will house node and express code, among other things
cd /home/user/angular_apps/my_new_project/client
yo angular  // get yeoman to scaffold out the front end
    // yeoman asked many questions.  I said no to replacing grunt with anything else and I said yes to every other include  
npm install // this will install all the required packages
bower install // this will hook up bower and thus prevent a downstream error
grunt serve 

The grunt serve command results in the following complete error output:

[user@localhost client]$ grunt serve
Running "serve" task
Running "clean:server" (clean) task
>> 0 paths cleaned.
Running "wiredep:app" (wiredep) task
Running "wiredep:test" (wiredep) task
Running "wiredep:sass" (wiredep) task
Running "concurrent:server" (concurrent) task
    Warning: Running "compass:server" (compass) task
    Warning: Command failed: /bin/sh -c compass --version
    /bin/sh: compass: command not found
     Use --force to continue.
    Aborted due to warnings.

    Execution Time (2016-02-15 23:22:25 UTC)
    loading tasks                  254ms  ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 76%
    loading grunt-contrib-compass   28ms  ▇▇▇ 8%
    compass:server                  50ms  ▇▇▇▇▇ 15%
    Total 333ms Use --force to continue.

    Aborted due to warnings.

Execution Time (2016-02-15 23:22:24 UTC)
loading tasks             307ms  ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 20%
wiredep:app               254ms  ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 17%
wiredep:sass               37ms  ▇▇▇ 2%
loading grunt-concurrent   23ms  ▇▇ 2%
concurrent:server         865ms  ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 57%
Total 1.5s
[user@localhost client]$ 

Note that the same error message is returned when I try running grunt serve as root instead. So what specific steps need to be taken to resolve this error?

Answer 1

I thought compass was a ruby thing.

try gem install compass

For yum based systems

yum -y install gcc ruby-devel rubygems compass might also work.