How to pass variables from one lesscss stylesheet to an included stylesheet?

Question

I am attempting to use lesscss to build a templating system where each template has 3 or 4 alternative colour schemes.

So for example, I could have a red.less stylesheet that looks like this:

@main_colour: #ff0000;
@import 'main.less';

So, I only have one main.less stylesheet to maintain which contains all the main styles, and uses the variables set for colour codes. I can then create a seperate colour.less file for each colour scheme.

Only problem is when I try to do this I get a Less::VariableNameError which indicates that LESS is parsing the @imports BEFORE it parses the variables.

Is there a workaround to this or any other way to achieve the same end result?

Answer 1

In reference to your tweet, yes, this would work as you expect in Sass. I'm actually kind of surprised that it doesn't work in Less.

Answer 2

I guess the Less guys wanted to keep the .Less file atomic and independent of external environmental settings. This was what I assumed, but I also didn't like it so our .NET port http://www.dotlesscss.com will allow you to do this by default.

Its not a big change to do in the original Less ruby version and if you fancy tinkering with the source I can point you in the right direction.

Out of interest, without been traitorous to the Less team I quite like the SASS syntax now and there are additional things such as conditional statements and loops that you cant (yet) do with Less.

@nex3 - you guys should stop competing and just work together.