Less PHP is broken? - php

Question

So I am using Less PHP to compile .less files down to .css and I decided to try out a small class I wrote where I take all the .less files in a directory and compile them to .css and move them to their own css directory.
So to test this I took all of twitter bootstrap less and placed it into a directory and then ran my class I wrote, see below, and found less php to be exploding: the current error is:
Error occurred:exception 'Exception' with message 'variable #alert-padding is undefined: failed at 'padding: #alert-padding;'
The class I wrote is just a simple wrapper:
class AisisLess_Less_Less{
protected $_less = null;
protected $_file = null;
public function __construct(){
$this->_file = new AisisCore_FileHandling_File();
$this->_less = new lessc();
$this->init();
}
public function init(){}
public function compile_directory($pattern, $compile_to_dir){
$less_files = $this->_file->get_directory_of_files($pattern);
$this->_compile($less_files, $compile_to_dir);
}
protected function _compile($array_of_files, $compile_directory){
foreach($array_of_files as $file){
$file_without_path = substr( $file, strrpos( $file, '/' )+1 );
try{
$css_file = preg_replace('"\.less"', '.css', $file_without_path);
$this->_less->checkedCompile($file, $compile_directory . $css_file);
}catch(exception $e){
throw new AisisLess_Exceptions_LessException('Error occurred:' . $e);
}
}
}
}
The concept is you use as such:
$less = new AisisLess_Less_Less();
$less->compile_directory(path/to/less/*.less, path/to/compiled/out/put);
My code is just a simple wrapper. The actual error is being thrown by the less library on some variable thing which is apart of the bootstrap less files.
So is the library acting up or is bootstrap failing at coding or have I screwed something up?
And if so how do I fix this?

Answer 1

What I suspect (no proof). If I understand you correctly, you just have the directory of bootstrap files and your code runs through them sequentially compiling them to css. That means the first file it is trying to compile is alerts.less which, low and behold, the very first variable reference in that file is (as of this writing) on line 10:
padding: #alert-padding;
This matches your error.
The issue is most likely that the bootstrap files are not designed to just be blindly compiled, because in most cases each is its own little piece, but requires other key pieces to compile (like variables.less and mixins.less). This is why, generally speaking, you only compile the bootstrap.less file which then will #import all the necessary files.
Basically, if I understand correctly what you have designed and how it works, you picked a bad set of files to run tests on because they are not designed to work that way. Better to just create a few small less files that are independent of each other for testing. However, what this has revealed is that your plan has a potential flaw, in that it will only function on standalone files, so you cannot blindly run any .less file through it, or you will get such compile errors because of broken dependencies.