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chrisjlee
Asked: 2012-01-20 09:50:41 +0800 CST

How do you install less css command line compiler?

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From my understanding and correct me if I'm wrong, I have to get ruby or NPM installed to get the less css compiler working.

I don't have any ruby installed and I'm not really sure how to get my computer to that point. I also want to minimize my footprint; installing the minimal amount of ruby libraries if possible (because i will never use ruby except for when i run less).

What are the steps involved in getting less working and running?

Before you down vote, I know there was this previous thread (Less CCS compiler install).

This particular person already has some other packages installed. I'm trying to figure out all the packages needed to get to that point.

Or if someone could point me to the right documentation I would be thrilled!

ruby

5 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    I'm not entirely sure if by compiler you want something that will automatically compile your less files on the fly or on the server. Because otherwise you can 

    $ sudo apt-get install node-less yui-compressor

    (On Ubuntu 12.04, the node-less package is called node-less.)

    and then,

    $ lessc example.less > compiled_example.css
$ yui-compressor -o small_and_compiled_example.css compiled_example.css
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  2. Most simple way is to install nodejs with its package manager npm. Nodejs is in the repositories, but that one is a bit outdated, instead you could use this ppa:

    sudo apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs

    ( https://github.com/joyent/node/wiki/Installing-Node.js-via-package-manager ) Especially if you're doing JavaScript/Web development nodejs is pretty important today.

    At this point it's simply (as stated on http://lesscss.org)

    npm install -g less

    Probably, because you install globally (for the command), you need to prepend this comment with sudo.

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  3. First of all, there are a few things that need to be said:

    • Ruby on Debian (and therefore by extension, Ubuntu) has a horrible setup with ruby.

    • As such, the "recommended" solution is to compile and install your own version of ruby - this is made fairly painless with railsready.

    wget --no-check-certificate https://raw.github.com/joshfng/railsready/master/railsready.sh && bash railsready.sh

    What that script will do for you is download ruby, compile it and then install it for you. After that, you need to run exec $SHELL, and then you can install less with with gem install less (no need for sudo)

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  4. On Ubuntu 12.04, the LessCSS version in the repository is 1.2.2. To get LessCSS 1.3.3, you could use Node Package Manager :

    sudo apt-get install npm

    and then 

    npm install less

    After that you'll have to change your PATH or use full path to the less compiler:

    ~/node_modules/less/bin/lessc
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  5. There is also a python-lesscpy compiler, but it doesn't work for Bootstrap 3 at least.

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