Source maps for CSS?

[benlk]

Largo's CSS rules are scattered across a large number of LESS files, and sometimes tracking down which file is creating a property is difficult. It would be nice to have grunt watch or grunt less build source maps, even if they aren't included in this repository and are .gitignore'd.

Not something for 0.4, but something I think should be considered for future builds.

[aschweigert]

I'm definitely pro-explaining more about what's where. We had a request previously to include an unminified version of style.css in addition to the minified version so that might be a good place to start, but having more documentation here would also help

[benlk]

If we're building the source map files, should they be included in the repo, or should they be in .gitignore? cc @rnagle

grunt-contrib-less doesn't currently support outputting multiple source maps, or compiling a single source map from multiple files. When gruntjs/grunt-contrib-less#243 is merged in, we'll be able to set combineSourceFiles: true in the less development task.

The solution until then is to have the Gruntfile compile an all-in-one .less file and then rander source maps from that.

[benlk]

It looks like gruntjs/grunt-contrib-less#243 isn't going to be merged in. (Unless a contributor reopens; they appear to be divided on the subject.)

We can try this workaround or figure out something using grunt-contrib-concat.

[benlk]

I've created a sourcemaps branch. f6b0daf puts sourcemaps inline, when grunt watch and grunt less:development are run. it does not run that way for grunt less:production.

Advantages of this over separate map files:

• currently possible

Disadvantages:

• inline source maps in development should not make it into production
• inline source maps can be up to 250,000 characters in css/style.css and will negatively affect performance if committed, unless the inline sourcemaps are stripped by minification and if we use the minified version of files in production.
• inline source maps cannot be used independent of minification.

[benlk]

#646 merged, so closing this!