lessc: command not found

Question

I'm on OS X.8 and a newbie at Node & LESS. I thought I installed lessc earlier and when I go to /usr/local/bin I see lessc

but for the life of me, I can't run it. Anytime I do run it, I see -bash: lessc: command not found

So I've tried the tip here which has the following:

ln -s ~/.npm/less/1.3.3/package/bin/lessc my/local/dir

My local dir happens to be on a second drive on my laptop, here's the path: /Volumes/Mac17/Users/denis2/Sites/staging/assets/less

With all that said, I try and run:

lessc boostrap.less

and still get

-bash: lessc: command not found

I'm totally lost here and any help would be tremendous.

Answer 1

Just follow the steps :

1. Make lessc executable by your user(permission denied means you dont have permission to run) like chmod 755 lessc
2. Export the location of lessc into the PATH like export PATH=$PATH:/home/user/folder/path/less/bin (where lessc is present)
3. Use lessc lessc boostrap.less

You should put PATH export in environment so that you dont have to do it every time you login See here : Setting environment variables in OS X?

Answer 2

If you enter just lessc, it is searched in the $PATH. For security reasons, the current directory is not in the $PATH. Try

./lessc bootstrap.less

or, if that doesn't work, simply

~/.npm/less/1.3.3/package/bin/lessc bootstrap.less

If you get a Permission Denied error then, you may need to mark the file as executable. Use

chmod a+x ~/.npm/less/1.3.3/package/bin/lessc

to do that. You may also need to call node directly, if it isn't in your $PATH.