Visual studio - precompile - dotless

asp.net-mvc visual-studio-2008 less dotless
Pickels picture Pickels · Feb 1, 2010 · Viewed 12.2k times · Source

I wonder if there is a way to precompile *.less files(http://www.dotlesscss.org/) with visual studio.

The site gives me a dotless.compiler.exe but I am not sure how to hook this up to visual studio. I am looking for a solution for both Webforms and ASP.NET MVC.

Answer

David R. Longnecker picture David R. Longnecker · Feb 2, 2010

Depending on your build environment, you can kick off dotless.Compiler.exe as a build task.

For example, using a Pre-Build task in Visual Studio (all 1 line):

$(SolutionDir)Tools\dotLess\dotless.compiler.exe -m 
    $(ProjectDir)content\css\site.less $(ProjectDir)content\css\site.css

The macros ($(SolutionDir), etc) allow a bit of flexibility to project and file locations. Rather than using the standard .less files, simply reference the new .css files in your markup.

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