Q:

Cannot get Compass to generate icon sprites

I'm fairly new to Compass, but I have been trying to use Compass in a project to generate my icon sprites.  See this tutorial:

http://beta.compass-style.org/help/tutorials/spriting/

IMO, the tutorial isn't exactly clear.  To start, the tutorial never tells you to create the "_icons.scss" file that contains the "all-icon-sprites" mixin. 
@import "icon/*.png";
@include all-icon-sprites;

The result of this is an error: 

"Syntax error: Undefined mixin 'all-icon-sprites'." 

So I added the "_icons.scss" file to my project, and changed the code to:
@import "icon/*.png";
@import "_icons";
@include all-icon-sprites;

Now, I get this error: 

Syntax error: Invalid CSS after "  $delete-position": expected ")", was ": $icon-delete-..." 

on line 28 of /path/to/_icons.scss

Can anyone explain to me what I'm doing wrong?  Or is the problem actually with the "_icons.scss" file? 

A:

The tutorial doesn't tell you to import the _icons.scss, because it is not required.  You either import the png files or the generated file -- not both.  They are the same, except if you import the png files, you end up importing a generated stylesheet that is kept up to date automatically as the png files change (renames, added, removed, etc). 
do you have any png files in the <images>/icon directory? 
To be honest, this error is one I would expect to see if the compass version that is processing the stylesheet isn't the one you're using on the command line.  Are you compiling with rails or the CLI?