title: Correctly configure Laravel 5 Elixir to compile .scss files
body: <p>I am trying to use Laravel elixir to compile a simple sass file <code>app.scss</code> which is in my <code>resources &gt; assets &gt; sass</code> directory. I have node, gulp and elixir installed and my <code>gulpfile.js</code> file looks like this...</p>
  
  <pre><code>var elixir = require('laravel-elixir');
  
  /*
   |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   | Elixir Asset Management
   |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
   |
   | Elixir provides a clean, fluent API for defining some basic Gulp tasks
   | for your Laravel application. By default, we are compiling the Less
   | file for our application, as well as publishing vendor resources.
   |
   */
  
  elixir(function(mix) {
      mix.sass('app.scss');
  });
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However when I am running gulp I am getting some strange errors. I first tried with a simple sass file with no includes...</p>
  
  <pre><code>body {
      padding-top: 40px;
  }
  
  body, label, /checkbox label {
      font-weight: 300px;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I am getting this error from my terminal...</p>
  
  <pre><code>[14:44:40] Starting 'default'...
  [14:44:40] Starting 'sass'...
  [14:44:41] Finished 'default' after 1.45 s
  [14:44:41] gulp-notify: [Laravel Elixir] Error: invalid top-level expression
  [14:44:41] Finished 'sass' after 1.47 s
  [14:44:41] gulp-notify: [Error running notifier] Could not send message: not found: notify-send
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>And when I add <code>@include 'pages/home';</code> to the top of my <code>app.scss</code> file (and <code>pages &gt; home.scss</code> does exist) I get the following error...</p>
  
  <pre><code>[14:38:03] Starting 'default'...
  [14:38:03] Starting 'sass'...
  [14:38:04] Finished 'default' after 1.42 s
  [14:38:04] gulp-notify: [Laravel Elixir] Error: invalid name in @include directive
  [14:38:04] Finished 'sass' after 1.44 s
  [14:38:04] gulp-notify: [Error running notifier] Could not send message: not found: notify-send
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I know the notifier error is because I am running it in a VM so that doesn't bother me but the previous errors are resulting in no sass being compiled at all.</p>
  
  <p>If it helps I'm running Laravel 5 on Mac with OSX Mavericks using homestead as an environment.</p>
  
  <p>The strange thing is that I had this working before and I just started a new Laravel project and all of a sudden it wont work. Does anyone know what's going on?</p>