Differences in this fork

This is the same as madskritensen's web compiler but includes this pull request: https://github.com/madskristensen/WebCompiler/pull/369/files This lets you set the location of the folder so the webcompiler doesn't need to be recreated every time, which can significantly speed up builds.

Releases

You can get a nuget package for this here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1QOZb0OVIgBXpH9lmj7k_Q49rPmbc9XWj Put it on your own NuGet server and install it. You may have to modify your .csproj file to point to it when you uninstall the old webcompiler and switch to this one, for some reason I can't be bothered to look into. Really, it's easier to just modify the packages.config and .csproj by hand.

How to use

Set a system environment variable called WEBCOMPILER_WORKING_DIRECTORY. Point it at a folder your build system will have permission to write to.

Windows 10 and Windows 8 instructions for setting the variable. In Search, search for and then select: System (Control Panel) Click the Advanced system settings link. Click Environment Variables. In the section System Variables, find the PATH environment variable and select it. Click Edit. If the PATH environment variable does not exist, click New. In the Edit System Variable (or New System Variable) window, specify the value of the PATH environment variable. Click OK. Close all remaining windows by clicking OK.

If Visual Studio is already running when you set the variable, you will need to restart Visual Studio. On a build server you may have to reboot the server so it picks up the changes.

I created a folder at C:\Program Files\WebCompiler and gave Everyone modify permissions

Building the Project Yourself

Run WebCompiler\build\build.cmd then Build with Visual Studio 2017. Doesn't look like Mads has checked in a way to create the .nupkg. I just grabbed the latest nupkg off nuget, renamed it with the new version. Then I renamed it to a zip, copied the binaries into it, modified BuildWebCompiler.nuspec with the new version, renamed it back to nupkg, and pushed it to our local nuget server.

Web Compiler

A Visual Studio extension that compiles LESS, Sass Stylus, JSX, ES6 and CoffeeScript files.

Download the extension at the VS Gallery or get the nightly build

See the changelog for changes and roadmap.

Features

• Compilation of LESS, Scss, Stylus, JSX, ES6 and (Iced)CoffeeScript files
• Saving a source file triggers re-compilation automatically
• Specify compiler options for each individual file
• Error List integration
• MSBuild support for CI scenarios
• Minify the compiled output
• Minification options for each language is customizable
• Shows a watermark when opening a generated file
• Shortcut to compile all specified files in solution
• Task Runner Explorer integration
• Command line interface
• Integrates with Web Analyzer

Getting started

Right-click any .less, .scss, .styl, .jsx, .es6 or .coffee file in Solution Explorer to setup compilation.

A file called compilerconfig.json is created in the root of the project. This file lets you modify the behavior of the compiler.

Right-clicking the compilerconfig.json file lets you easily run all the configured compilers.

Compile on save

Any time a .less, .scss, .styl, .jsx, .es6 or .coffee file is modified within Visual Studio, the compiler runs automatically to produce the compiled output file.

The same is true when saving the compilerconfig.json file where all configured files will be compiled.

Compile on build / CI support

In ASP.NET MVC and WebForms projects you can enable compilation as part of the build step. Simply right-click the compilerconfig.json file to enable it.

Clicking the menu item will prompt you with information about what will happen if you click the OK button.

A NuGet package will be installed into the packages folder without adding any files to the project itself. The NuGet package contains an MSBuild task that will run the exact same compilers on the compilerconfig.json file in the root of the project.

Compile all

You can run the compiler on all compilerconfig.json files in the solution by using the keyboard shortcut Shift+Alt+Y or by using the button on the top level Build menu.

Task Runner Explorer

Get a quick overview of the files you've specified or execute a compilation directly in Task Runner Explorer.

You can even set bindings so that compilation happens automatically during certain Visual Studio events, such as BeforeBuild and Project Open.

Error list

When a compiler error occurs, the error list in Visual Studio will show the error and its exact location in the source file.

Source maps

Source maps are supported for .scss files only for now, but the plan is to have source map support for all languages. Web Compiler differs from it's predecesor, Web Essentials, in that it inlines a base64 encoded version of the map in the generated .css file rather than producing a separate .map file.

compilerconfig.json

The extension adds a compilerconfig.json file at the root of the project which is used to configure all compilation.

Here's an example of what that file looks like:

[
  {
    "outputFile": "output/site.css",
    "inputFile": "input/site.less",
    "minify": {
        "enabled": true
    },
    "includeInProject": true,
    "options":{
        "sourceMap": false
    }
  },
  {
    "outputFile": "output/scss.css",
    "inputFile": "input/scss.scss",
    "minify": {
        "enabled": true
    },
    "includeInProject": true,
    "options":{
        "sourceMap": true
    }
  }
]

Default values for compilerconfig.json can be found in the compilerconfig.json.defaults file in the same location.