If you check out bootstrap's getting started page, you'll find that they state:
LESS compilation
If you download the original files, you need to compile Bootstrap's
LESS files into usable CSS. To do that, Bootstrap only officially
supports Recess, Twitter's CSS hinter built on top of less.js.
Though not using dotless, I followed a similar path that you did using lessc, and then found that using recess resolved my issue. Perhaps using recess would be an option for you too?
As an example, I have a file called tmpfl.less with the following contents:
@import "mixins.less";
@import "variables.less";
.wrapper {
.make-row();
}
.content-main {
.make-lg-column(8);
}
.content-secondary {
.make-lg-column(3);
.make-lg-column-offset(1);
}
If I run lessc on it, I get the following result:
lessc tmpfl.less
NameError: .size is undefined in mixins.less:47:0
46 // Sizing shortcuts
47 .size(@width; @height) {
48 width: @width;
Now, I successfully use recess as follows:
recess --compile tmpfl.less > tmpfl.css
Update:
In order to utilize Recess in a .Net environment, specifically in Visual Studio, one can follow these instructions for details on installing. Those instructions provide an overview, but perhaps leave out some details on getting Node.js installed. Microsoft has some brief words about it and they link to a GitHub project which might be helpful depending on your version of Visual Studio.
If you don't go down the Node.js-in-Visual Studio route, then really the main goal is to have Node.js installed somewhere, and then ultimately npm, the package manager for Node.js so you can install Recess. That can be achieved on Windows by going to the Node.js download, and installing the Windows version. Installing npm is highlighted in this stackoverflow discussion. Once installed, you just need to run npm to install Recess as follows:
npm install recess -g
That is also discussed in the first link of this update.
