Re: [xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Using Less4j by default in XWiki

Hi developers. I have recently implemented the ability to use LESS in SSX: http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-10708. This feature has pointed me out some bugs, that are reported upstream: https://github.com/less/less.js/issues/1878 https://github.com/less/less.js/issues/1968 I have tried to implement a workaround, but as a result, it is preventing us to use an important feature of LESS: .extend(). And it simply breaks the Caty work on the Menu Application. Moreover, LESS has been rewritten in version 2. But because of this refactoring, the Rhino version does not work. See: https://github.com/less/less.js/issues/2316 So we are stuck with the current version of LESS, with the bugs listed above (that I am not able to patch). But in parallel, I have worked to use LESS4j instead of the official LESS project (http://jira.xwiki.org/browse/XWIKI-11034). And today, I finally managed to make it work! The good news is that LESS4j does not have the bugs that are blocking us. I propose to commit this for 6.4M2 (before tomorrow), and we can still revert it afterwards. Advantages of LESS4j: * should be quicker (see: https://github.com/xwiki-contrib/less-vs-sass-benchmark) * does not have the bugs listed above * we can hope that the version 2 will be ported to LESS4j too. Drawbacks of LESS4j: * maintained by only one developer (but reactive when I report bugs) * not exactly the same behaviour than LESS: https://github.com/SomMeri/less4j/wiki/Differences-Between-Less.js-and-Less… * maybe the error messages are less kindly than lessjs ones. My implementation is configurable: an administrator can decide to use the LESS official version by changing a property in xwiki.properties. I just propose to have LESS4j by default. Here is my +1. Thanks, -- Guillaume Delhumeau (gdelhumeau(a)xwiki.com) Research & Development Engineer at XWiki SAS Committer on the XWiki.org project _______________________________________________ devs mailing list devs(a)xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/devs