A Visual Studio extension that compiles LESS files.
Forked from Jason Moore, removed extra stuff, kept LESS, updated node & node_modules, added sourceMap options.
- Compilation of LESS files
- Saving a source file triggers re-compilation automatically
- Specify compiler options for each individual file
- Error List integration
- MSBuild support for CI scenarios
- Minify the compiled output
- Shows a watermark when opening a generated file
- Shortcut to compile all specified files in solution
- Task Runner Explorer integration
- Command line interface
- Integrates with Web Analyzer
Right-click any .less
file in Solution Explorer to setup compilation.
A file called compilerconfig.json
is created in the root of the
project. This file lets you modify the behavior of the compiler.
Right-clicking the compilerconfig.json
file lets you easily
run all the configured compilers.
Any time a .less
file is modified within Visual Studio, the compiler
runs automatically to produce the compiled output file.
The same is true when saving the compilerconfig.json
file where
all configured files will be compiled.
In ASP.NET MVC and WebForms projects you can enable compilation as part
of the build step. Simply right-click the compilerconfig.json
file to
enable it.
Clicking the menu item will prompt you with information about what will happen if you click the OK button.
A NuGet package will be installed into the packages
folder without adding
any files to the project itself. The NuGet package contains an MSBuild
task that will run the exact same compilers on the compilerconfig.json
file in the root of the project.
You can run the compiler on all compilerconfig.json
files
in the solution by using the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+Y
or by using the button on the top level Build menu.
Get a quick overview of the files you've specified or execute a compilation directly in Task Runner Explorer.
You can even set bindings so that compilation happens automatically during certain Visual Studio events, such as BeforeBuild and Project Open.
When a compiler error occurs, the error list in Visual Studio will show the error and its exact location in the source file.
Source maps are supported for .scss
files only for now, but the
plan is to have source map support for all languages. Web Compiler differs from it's predecesor, Web Essentials, in that it inlines a base64 encoded version of the map in the generated .css file rather than producing a separate .map file.
The extension adds a compilerconfig.json
file at the root of the
project which is used to configure all compilation.
Here's an example of what that file looks like:
[
{
"outputFile": "output/site.css",
"inputFile": "input/site.less",
"minify": {
"enabled": true
},
"includeInProject": true,
"options":{
"sourceMap": false
}
}
]
Default values for compilerconfig.json
can be found in the compilerconfig.json.defaults
file in the same location.