How to Process LessCss .less Files into .css Files in a Maven Build Process?

Thanks to Marcel Overdijk's plugin, it is now possible to process .less LessCss files into .css file during the maven build process.

Let's consider a maven web project, one can create a /css and a /less directory. The latter contains the source .less files, and the former will contain the processed .css files.

One should add the following plugin and dependency in pom.xml:

  <dependency>
    <groupId>org.lesscss</groupId>
    <artifactId>
      lesscss-maven-plugin
    </artifactId>
    <version>1.3.0</version>
  </dependency>

  <plugin>
    <groupId>org.lesscss</groupId>
    <artifactId>lesscss-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.3.0</version>
    <configuration>
      <sourceDirectory>
        ${project.basedir}/src/main/webapp/less
      </sourceDirectory>
      <outputDirectory>
        ${project.basedir}/src/main/webapp/css
      </outputDirectory>
      <compress>false</compress>
      <includes>
        <include>example.less</include>
      </includes>
      </configuration>
    <executions>
      <execution>
        <goals>
          <goal>compile</goal>
        </goals>
      </execution>
    </executions>
  </plugin>

This configuration will convert the example.less file into a example.css file during the maven build process. Any existing .css file is overwritten at each build process.

A Maven project sample is available from Git.