lessless

Compiles all your project's LESS into CSS, converts LESS links into regular CSS links, and removes less.js from your html page.

CAUTION: This tool modifies your source code and therefore is meant to be run as part of a build process that creates a copy of your project files(like RequireJS and others).

Installing

npm install lessless -g

Usage

As Command Line Tool

lessless --directory /path/to/project

cd /path/to/project
lessless

As Module

var lessless = require('lessless');
lessless.optimizeProject('/path/to/project'); //OR process.cwd()

Optionally specify @import paths

LESS needs to know where to look when it finds an @import in your less files. The defaults are the root of the project, and a CSS folder in the root. Lessless also automatically adds a less file's path when searching for imports, so that relative paths work without any extra configuration. You can add to these default places to look by passing an array of paths as the second parameter:

lessless.optimizeProject('/path/to/project', ['mystyles/less', 'look/here/for/styles/too']);

or from the command line (notice you have to use the --styledirs flag multiple times to pass multiple args)

lessless --styledirs /my/styles --styledirs /my/css

Optionally specify extensions to strip (html is default).

lessless.optimizeProject('/path/to/project', ['mystyles/less'], ['jsp', 'cshtml']);

or from the command line (notice you have to use the --strip flag multiple times to pass multiple args)

lessless --strip html --strip jsp

So What Exactly Does It Do?

Scans your project for LESS files and generates the appropriate CSS files with the same names. For example if your project has a styles/main.less, a styles/main.css file will get created (using the less.js tool).
Updates any html files to reference the new CSS instead of the LESS. For example:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet/less" type="text/css" href="styles/main.less" />
  </head>
</html>

becomes:

<html>
  <head>
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="styles/main.css" />
  </head>
</html>

Removes the less.js file from your html because you don't need it once your LESS is compiled into regular CSS. Example:

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="js/less.js"></script>
  </head>
</html>