When OpenNTF announced the "Code for Tim" initiative, I browsed Tim's GitHub repository list and one stuck out to me: the "xspless" stub repository for adding LESS CSS support to XPages. I'd latently wished for this sort of feature for a while, but hadn't yet set out down the path. It seems Tim had had the same desire, and had taken at least one more step than me.

I've decided to try my hand at making this desire a reality, and it's borne some fruit so far. I've created a fork of his project to house my attempts:

https://github.com/jesse-gallagher/xspless

So far, I've made functional drafts of two tacks:

• A servlet plugin for Domino, in the "org.openntf.xsp.less" and ".feature" projects. This servlet is available at "/xspless" within each database (behavior outside of a database is not handled) and it processes the named file (can be a Stylesheet resource, File Resource, or file in WebContent) just-in-time and delivers the result as normal CSS
• A builder plugin for Designer, in the "org.openntf.xsp.less.builder" and ".feature" projects. This builder adds a new Eclipse Nature to Designer (activated per-project by right-clicking the app and choosing "Add/Remove LESS CSS Nature") that compiles Stylesheet resources named in the form of "foo.less.css" (Designer automatically appends the ".css") and other File or WebContent resources named in the form of "foo.less" and stores the compiled results in the NSF

My ideal goal would be the ability to write .less files in Designer without any plugins and have the server treat them as normal CSS files with pre-processing, including them in resource-aggregation chains. Since I don't currently know how to have files processed on the fly and also included in aggregation, I created the two routes, with the latter being the likely-preferred route. Though it requires installing a plugin on each developer's system, it has the distinct advantage of the resultant files working perfectly with the normal resource aggregation pipleline of the server.

In their current state, these plugins seem to do their job. If I find out a way to hook into the resource chain on the server transparently, I'll look to improve the server plugin, but for now the Designer plugin seems promising. I plan to give a shot to using it for normal development; it will likely be a refreshing change of pace to be able to use LESS to write cleaner CSS. After a bit of testing, I'll likely create a project on OpenNTF.