/grunt-contrib-less

Compile LESS files to CSS.

Primary LanguageJavaScriptMIT LicenseMIT

grunt-contrib-less v0.11.0 Build Status

Compile LESS files to CSS.

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ^0.4.0

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:

npm install grunt-contrib-less --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-less');

This plugin was designed to work with Grunt 0.4.x. If you're still using grunt v0.3.x it's strongly recommended that you upgrade, but in case you can't please use v0.3.2.

Less task

Run this task with the grunt less command.

Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.

Options

paths

Type: String Array Function

Default: Directory of input file.

Specifies directories to scan for @import directives when parsing. Default value is the directory of the source, which is probably what you want.

If you specify a function the source filepath will be the first argument. You can return either a string or an array of paths to be used.

rootpath

Type: String

Default: ""

A path to add on to the start of every url resource.

compress

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Compress output by removing some whitespaces.

cleancss

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Compress output using clean-css.

ieCompat

Type: Boolean

Default: true

Enforce the css output is compatible with Internet Explorer 8.

For example, the data-uri function encodes a file in base64 encoding and embeds it into the generated CSS files as a data-URI. Because Internet Explorer 8 limits data-uris to 32KB, the ieCompat option prevents less from exceeding this.

optimization

Type: Integer

Default: null

Set the parser's optimization level. The lower the number, the less nodes it will create in the tree. This could matter for debugging, or if you want to access the individual nodes in the tree.

strictImports

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Force evaluation of imports.

strictMath

Type: Boolean

Default: false

When enabled, math is required to be in parenthesis.

strictUnits

Type: Boolean

Default: false

When enabled, less will validate the units used (e.g. 4px/2px = 2, not 2px and 4em/2px throws an error).

syncImport

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Read @import'ed files synchronously from disk.

dumpLineNumbers

Type: String

Default: false

Configures -sass-debug-info support.

Accepts following values: comments, mediaquery, all.

relativeUrls

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Rewrite urls to be relative. false: do not modify urls.

customFunctions

Type: Object

Default: none

Define custom functions to be available within your LESS stylesheets. The function's name must be lowercase. In the definition, the first argument is the less object, and subsequent arguments are from the less function call. Values passed to the function are types defined within less, the return value may be either one of them or primitive. See the LESS documentation for more information on the available types.

report

Choices: 'min', 'gzip'
Default: 'min'

Either report only minification result or report minification and gzip results. This is useful to see exactly how well clean-css is performing but using 'gzip' will make the task take 5-10x longer to complete. Example output.

sourceMap

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Enable source maps.

sourceMapFilename

Type: String

Default: none

Write the source map to a separate file with the given filename.

sourceMapURL

Type: String

Default: none

Override the default url that points to the sourcemap from the compiled css file.

sourceMapBasepath

Type: String

Default: none

Sets the base path for the less file paths in the source map.

sourceMapRootpath

Type: String

Default: none

Adds this path onto the less file paths in the source map.

outputSourceFiles

Type: Boolean

Default: false

Puts the less files into the map instead of referencing them.

modifyVars

Type: Object

Default: none

Overrides global variables. Equivalent to --modify-vars='VAR=VALUE' option in less.

Usage Examples

less: {
  development: {
    options: {
      paths: ["assets/css"]
    },
    files: {
      "path/to/result.css": "path/to/source.less"
    }
  },
  production: {
    options: {
      paths: ["assets/css"],
      cleancss: true,
      modifyVars: {
        imgPath: '"http://mycdn.com/path/to/images"',
        bgColor: 'red'
      }
    },
    files: {
      "path/to/result.css": "path/to/source.less"
    }
  }
}

Release History

  • 2014-03-19   v0.11.0   Custom functions can return types defined by less paths option now accepts a function Replaced deprecated grunt.util methods Removes deprecated grunt.lib.contrib
  • 2014-03-01   v0.10.0   sourceMapBasepath accepts a function. Update copyright to 2014. Update .gitattributes. Update less.js to v1.7.0. Prevent CRLF in the repo. Adds modify-vars option. Changed to async stack call. Fixes data-uri test. Normalize line endings on tests.
  • 2014-01-07   v0.9.0   Bump to less 1.6
  • 2013-12-06   v0.8.3   Support sourceMapURL
  • 2013-11-14   v0.8.2   Support outputSourceFiles
  • 2013-10-24   v0.8.1   Support sourceMapFilename, sourceMapBasepath and sourceMapRootpath
  • 2013-10-22   v0.8.0   Upgrade to LESS 1.5 Support strictUnits option Support sourceMap option Add customFunctions option for defining custom functions within LESS Output the source file name on error yuicompress option now cleancss (Less changed underlying dependency)
  • 2013-08-08   v0.7.0   Downgrade no source files warning to only in verbose mode
  • 2013-08-08   v0.6.5   Support strictMath option Support rootpath parse option
  • 2013-07-09   v0.6.4   Support relativeUrls option
  • 2013-07-06   v0.6.3   Add report option for minification and gzip results
  • 2013-07-03   v0.6.2   support syncImport
  • 2013-06-12   v0.6.1   Support ieCompat
  • 2013-06-09   v0.6.0   Bump less to 1.4.0
  • 2013-05-23   v0.5.2   Improve error handling.
  • 2013-04-25   v0.5.1   Gracefully handle configuration without sources.
  • 2013-02-15   v0.5.0   First official release for Grunt 0.4.0.
  • 2013-01-23   v0.5.0rc7   Updating grunt/gruntplugin dependencies to rc7. Changing in-development grunt/gruntplugin dependency versions from tilde version ranges to specific versions. Remove experimental wildcard destination support. Switching to this.files api.
  • 2012-10-18   v0.3.2   Add support for dumpLineNumbers.
  • 2012-10-12   v0.3.1   Rename grunt-contrib-lib dep to grunt-lib-contrib.
  • 2012-09-24   v0.3.0   Global options depreciated Revert normalize linefeeds.
  • 2012-09-16   v0.2.2   Support all less options Normalize linefeeds Default path to dirname of src file.
  • 2012-09-10   v0.2.0   Refactored from grunt-contrib into individual repo.

Task submitted by Tyler Kellen

This file was generated on Wed Mar 19 2014 21:07:24.