Eclipse plugin for LESS

Overview

LESS is a language which extends CSS with dynamic behavior such as variables, mixins, operations and functions. This plugin extends the Eclipse IDE by providing handy features to edit and compile LESS stylesheets.

Syntax coloring
Syntax coloring
Syntax is automatically colored in the LESS editor as you type.
Outline view
Outline view
The outline view provides an overview of your style sheet, and an easy access to its components.
Content assist
Content assist
Press CTRL+space to get a context relevant list of completion proposals for CSS properties and variable names.
Duplicated property
Errors and warnings
Potential errors in your stylesheet are detected in background and signaled by problem markers.
Variable linking
Variable and Mixin linking
Variable and mixin uses are automatically linked to their definition, allowing navigation and detection of undefined names.
Launch configuration
Launch the LESS compiler
Create launch configurations for LESS stylesheets, and run them directly from their contextual menu.
LESS compiler output
Jump to the next error and fix it
The error messages of the LESS compiler are directly provided in the Eclipse IDE, with hyperlinks to the source stylesheet.

Installation

Requirements

The Eclipse LESS plugin should run on all platforms where Eclipse and LESS are supported.

Step 1: Install Base Software

In order to use the Eclipse LESS plugin, you need:

Step 2: Install the plugin

Note: When installing the plugin, the Eclipse installation tool will automatically install required plugins from Eclipse repository (including Xtext).

How to use it?

Once you have installed the plugin, you just need to create a file with the file extension .less in any project. This file will automatically be opened with the LESS editor.

You may register additional file extensions for LESS stylesheets in the Eclipse Preferences (menu Window, then Preferences...), section General > Content Types.

You can disable some errors/warnings on a per-project warning, by editing the project properties (tab Validation > LESS.

In order to launch the LESS compiler from Eclipse, you need to create a launch configuration. For this:

Once this is done, you may compile any LESS stylesheet by selecting it in the project explorer, clicking on the right button to open the contextual menu and selecting Run as, LESS Compiler. This will use the default launch configuration you just created. You can also create specific launch configurations for each of your stylesheet.

License

The Eclipse LESS plugin is distributed under the Eclipse Plublic License Version 1.0.

It includes some files from the Eclipse Webtools Project. These files are also distributed under the Eclipse Public License Version 1.0.

History

Known issues

The following constructs of the LESS language are not (yet) supported:

The following features are not supported in the editor: