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I'm very confused with all the new frameworks, precompilers, etc that are out there. I haven't done really active web development for a while.

I've been using http://bootstrap-live-customizer.com/ to customize my bootstrap styling which works great for me so far. Now I want to change something like the border-radius at input fields, which you can't do with the customizer. So I thought I'll just copy my bootstrap.less file that I can download from that customizer, edit the corresponding border radius variable and try a less compiler only to find out nothing gets compiled, or rather it compiles but since bootstrap.less only consists of variables there's nothing that is actually being written in my bootstrap.css, correct?

I think I need a way to compile those variables into an actual file that assigns those variables in bootstrap.less to the bootstrap classes? Unfortunately, it's really confusing for me. There are so many things out there. npm, grunt, composer, whatever. How do you even start to figure out how all of this works or even just figuring out WHAT of those tools you need?

Anyway, to get back to this specific case: I have my bootstrap.less. How do I compile it so I get a working bootstrap.css that's not empty?

Siguza
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Andreas Galster
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  • What you download from the customizer is not `bootstrap.less` file. It's `variables.less` actually. The real `bootstrap.less` is [much more](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/blob/master/less/bootstrap.less) then that. In general I'm afraid your "question" is too wide for the SO (you need to find/read some tutorials on various ways of customzing BS). – seven-phases-max Nov 21 '14 at 07:49
  • Actually this already helped a bit. Seems like you need to download the LESS file package on getbootstrap.com, change the variables.less there and compile bootstrap.less, since that is the .less file that imports all the other variables. Right? I'm only asking if I'm right, because I still get a compile error from another less file ;). – Andreas Galster Nov 21 '14 at 10:07
  • Yes. Something like that. However instead of modifying the original `variable.less` it's better to override it with your customized one (see for example http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10451317). It's just too many possible ways to achieve the goal (each with various pros and cons) for a single SO Q or A. – seven-phases-max Nov 21 '14 at 10:19
  • Edit: Yes, that's it! I am using koala-app.com for compiling. Just gotta drag the bootstrap folder into the app and compile bootstrap.less. However, the bootstrap-live-customizer omits certain variables in variables.less, probably because it is intended to work for an older version of bootstrap. So compiling will fail since variables are missing. Thanks a lot :). – Andreas Galster Nov 21 '14 at 10:22

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