Custom .less files not compiling at all

Question

I have found that the less files are not compiling in my custom theme. at all. originally I discovered the problem when I made changes to my _extend. less file and no changes occurred, but now I have found that none of the .less files in my app/...web/source/CSS folder are compiling after the first loading of my website.

After downloading a fresh backup, I immediately made some changes to the CSS before opening the website online. this worked, but any consequent changes had no impact. I reversed the changes I had made and re-loaded the page by opening a new window. This reverted my original change, but any time after this no change is evident.

I am using xampp, with Magento 2.3.0 installed.

I have tried every fix found on this website and regular stack overflow, including clearing the cache, var folders and more using both commands and straight-up deleting the folders.

Please help.

Answer 1

Try using my extension to clear static content

https://github.com/DominicWatts/ClearStatic

Then try compiling again using static content deploy command

Answer 2

You can try this theme for less compilation from Github.

• Sample Less theme

Answer 3

I have found a solution.

When making any change to the .less files within your custom theme, follow the following four steps.

1. Delete the files within: <vendor>\var\view_preprocessed\pub\static\frontend\<vendor_theme>\en_NZ\css
2. Delete the files within: <vendor>\var\cache
3. Delete the files within: <vendor>\pub\static\frontend\<vendor_theme_name>\en_NZ\css
4. If in production mode, run the setup:static-content:deploy command. If in developer mode, simply refresh the page you are attempting to style.

After following these steps, I was able to observe the changes I made to my website.