Dead Simple LESS CSS Watch Compiler

A command that watches folders(and subfolders) for file changes and automatically compile the less css files into css. This is a file system watcher and compiler.

Parts of this script is modified from Mikeal Rogers's watch script (https://github.com/mikeal/watch)

Prerequisites

Install LESS (http://www.lesscss.org/) and make sure the lessc binary is accessible to the script. Installing LESS with the -g(global) flag will make the binary accessible to your system.

(sudo) npm install -g less

Installation

Install the less-watch-compiler command globally.

(sudo) npm install -g less-watch-compiler

Usage

With no main file

less-watch-compiler FOLDER_TO_WATCH FOLDER_TO_OUTPUT

With main file

less-watch-compiler FOLDER_TO_WATCH FOLDER_TO_OUTPUT MAIN_FILE_DOT_LESS

The 3rd parameter is optional, but once you define it, then, we will just compile the main and generate it as "{main_file_name}.css". All the files that has been referenced from the main one will be minified into it. Assuming the 3rd is "main.less"

input folder: src src main.less (import aux.less) aux.less
output folder: dist dist main.css

Otherwise, it will behave as previously: Assuming the 3rd is empty

input folder: src src main.less (import aux.less) aux.less
output folder: dist dist main.css aux.css

Real usage:

less-watch-compiler src dist main.less

###Example #1

less-watch-compiler tests/less tests/css

The above command will watch the tests/less folder and compile the LESS CSS files into tests/css folder as soon as they are added/updated.

###Example #2 Add less-watch-compiler.config.json as follows in your project folder

{
    "allowedExtensions":[".less"],
    "defaults": {
        "watchFolder": "tests/less",
        "outputFolder": "tests/css"
    }
}

The above will do the same as in example 1. But you can just run the following without passing the folders everytime.

less-watch-compiler

Extras:

By default, this script only compiles files with .less extension. More file extensions can be added by modifying the allowedExtensions array in config.json.
Files that start with underscores _style.css or period .style.css are ignored. This behavior can be changed in the filterFiles() function.
Github location: https://github.com/jonycheung/deadsimple-less-watch-compiler

Using the source files

Alternativelly, you can checkout the code nad run things locally like this:

node less-watch-compiler.js [options]

To run unit tests: npm test (see tests/test.js)

daniloster / deadsimple-less-watch-compiler