This morning I decided to try out JetBrain’s WebStorm. I am a huge fan of ReSharper and RubyMine and have been hearing some good things about WebStorm so I thought I would give it a try. It’s very early on in that process so I haven’t formed my opinion completely yet but I have a sour taste in my mouth after spending over an hour setting up automatic compilation of LESS in the tool. I was unable to find any documentation on the JetBrain’s site or otherwise on how to do it, so in the hopes of saving at least one person the headache I thought it would be wise to blog it.
Step 1: Find a LESS Compiler
You need to have a less compiler that you can tell the File Watcher to run and compiles the LESS to CSS. Fortunately I have been using LESS for awhile and have had need for the standalone compiler so I knew where to find one - https://github.com/duncansmart/less.js-windows. You can either clone the repo or download and extract the zip.
Step 2: Setup the File Watcher in WebStorm
Step 3: Watch it Work
Hopefully this helps you out and if I missed something and this process could have been easier let me know.
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Keith is a Senior Software Engineer with Falafel Software. He has been developing software since 1999 specializing in web-based solutions primarily using the Microsoft stack. He has been a Microsoft MVP in ASP.NET since 2012. (more...)
Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.