The less-precompiler allows you to author your stylesheets with the CSS superset of LESS. It supports @variables, .mixins() and lots of other really useful stuff. The less files will get compiled and _attached to your couchapp on every build and can even be compressed.

Add less-precompiler to your dependencies section in kanso.json.

  ...
  "dependencies": {
    "less-precompiler": null,
    ...
  }

run kanso install to fetch the package

To tell the precompiler which files to transform, add the section less, and in a key called compile, list the files you want to process.

  ...
  "less": {
    "compile": [ "css/style.less", ... ]
  }
  ...
  "dependencies": {
    "less-precompiler": null,
    ...
  }

Running kanso push will compile the file css/style.less to css/style.css and upload it to _attachments/css/style.css.

To enable compression of the output, add the compress flag and set it to true.

  ...
  "less": {
    "compile": [ ... ],
    "compress": true
  }

The output will additionally be compressed if you kanso push with the --minify flag, eg

kanso push app --minify

Less files can include other less templates, sometimes it's useful for a package to provide uncompiled .less files for use in a project. Before you can include them in the project's templates, the package providing the files needs to add the less path. This is so the compiler knows where to lookup the file when you @include it.

  ...
  "less": {
    "paths": ["./bootstrap"]
  }

You can also remove any .less files from attachments (if you placed them inside a directory also added as static files), by adding the remove_from_attachments property. This will remove all attachment with a .less extension!

  ...
  "less": {
    "compile": [ ... ],
    "remove_from_attachments": true
  }