SquishIt.Less ProcessIncludes() not working for CSS file

Question

I have a Less file which includes a CSS file, then a set of Less files. With SquishIt I want to combine and minify these, but it ignores the CSS file unless I rename it to .css.less. I believe ProcessIncludes() is intended for this purpose but makes no difference.

Does anyone know why ProcessIncludes() doesn't do anything on a CSS file linked in a Less file?

(This is a follow up to: this question about Squishit.Less not working at all, it now works for the Less files.)

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 28 '13 at 17:49

1

There is a configuration option for dotLess called "InlineCssFiles" that I believe does what you need. You can use your own configuration by overriding the static property "EngineBuilder" (its a Func) on less preprocessor. So in App_Start you could do something like this:

LessPreprocessor.EngineBuilder = () => new EngineFactory
            {
                Configuration = new DotlessConfiguration
                    {
                        InlineCssFiles = true,
                    }
            }.GetEngine();

answered Nov 28 '13 at 17:49

AlexCuse

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I have an issue on my test server that means I can't test this at the moment - but that sounds like the option I needed instead of ProcessIncludes. I can't find any decent docs for SquishIt.Less - I guess I needed to open the source! :\ – Ian Grainger Nov 29 '13 at 09:49
Yeah that's always a problem. I think I'm going to spend a little time adding /// comments to the important public methods and see what is out there to generate docs from that. I don't really use .less but I read a bit yesterday and I think that the option above will help you. – AlexCuse Dec 01 '13 at 01:08
Not sure when I can go back to test this. Have an answer. – Ian Grainger Dec 02 '13 at 11:54

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 28 '13 at 15:32

According to LESS documentation:

You can import both CSS and LESS files. Only LESS files import statements are processed, CSS file import statements are kept as they are.

You can force LESS to process a CSS file by:

@import (less) "file.css";

Note however that all this applies to the official LESS implementation and may not work in SquishIt. SquishIt seems to use the dotless compiler which is pretty much outdated.

SquishIt.Less ProcessIncludes() not working for CSS file

2 Answers2

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