title: application.css asset pipeline
body: <p>I'm on Rails 3.2.8 and I want to switch to using the asset pipeline.</p>
  
  <p>I am on my dev machine, and have my assets set up like this:
  <code>app/assets/stylesheets/application.css</code>:</p>
  
  <pre><code>  ...    
    *= require_directory ../public/javascripts/jquery/themes/base
    *= require_directory ../public/prototype/stylesheets/css
  */
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>All my stylesheets and js and images are in the public folder which is a catch-all for now. The folder structure:</p>
  
  <pre><code>app/assets
    /stylesheets
      /application.css
    /javascripts
    /images
    /public
      /stylesheets
      /javascripts
      /prototype
      /images
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Currently the <code>public/assets/application.css</code> file is empty. How do I compile this file in the development environment?</p>
  
  <p>When I run <code>Rails.application.config.assets.paths</code> in rails console, I'm getting <code>app/assets/public</code> and not the full directory path for the assets.</p>
  
  <p>In the views, I call the asset pipeline stylesheets: 
  <code>&lt;%= stylesheet_link_tag 'application.css' %&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>EDIT 1:
  I tried moving all the stylesheets to <code>app/assets/stylesheets/</code> but it is not compiling the application.css properly in the view. It compiles to this: </p>
  
  <p><code>&lt;link href="/assets/application.css" media="screen" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /&gt;</code></p>
  
  <p>And when I view the link, localhost:3000/assets/application.css it is a blank file.</p>
  
  <p>EDIT 2:
  I used single quotes instead of double quotes and that fixed the syntax errors. I think I have a handle on it now that I've figured out the pathing. Thanks!</p>