After hours of research, trial, frustration, and disappointment, I am very happy to say I have the matter solved.
UPDATED: I have posted here on Github: JCompass
In the end it was simple and elegant without the mess.
- Download the latest copy of JRuby (At the time of this posting it's version 1.7.4)
(http://www.jruby.org/download Find the "Complete Jar", second link from the bottom in the top group of links for the latest version)
(The rest is command line) - # Make a copy of jruby-complete-1.7.4.jar for the new singleton combined jar file
cp jruby-complete-1.7.4.jar jruby-complete.jar - # Now install these 3 gems locally:
# Without this I got errors.
java -jar jruby-complete.jar -S gem install -i ./compass-gems shared --no-rdoc --no-ri
# I flagged "--pre" to get the latest pre-release version, skip that if you want.
java -jar jruby-complete.jar -S gem install -i ./compass-gems sass --pre --no-rdoc --no-ri
# Again, I flagged "--pre" here. Also, I had heard this includes the sass gem as a dependency, but I installed it separately to be safe.
java -jar jruby-complete.jar -S gem install -i ./compass-gems compass --pre --no-rdoc --no-ri - # Now rename the jruby complete jar to the name for the new jar app, or we lose the original and have to go download it again
mv jruby-complete.jar jcompass.jar - # Now compile together
jar uf jcompass.jar -C compass-gems . # including the space and period at the end - # test it out:
java -jar jcompass.jar -S compass compile --help
java -jar jcompass.jar -S compass compile --sass-dir [relative or abs path to your .scss files] --css-dir [relative or asb path to destination .css files] --force
That's it.
You can download my version of jcompass.jar here.
Sources that helped me compile this, and many thanks to them:
http://blog.nicksieger.com/articles/2009/01/10/jruby-1-1-6-gems-in-a-jar/
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16188626/how-to-use-compass-through-jruby-for-embedding-in-my-soft
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15549617/cleanest-way-to-run-susy-compass-and-sass-within-jruby-complete