Create symlinks to LESS files

WARNING

All Magento CLI commands must be run by the file system owner.

To create symlinks to LESS files:

Command options:

bin/magento dev:source-theme:deploy [--type="..."] [--locale="..."] [--area="..."] [--theme="..."] [file1] ... [fileN]
INFO

During development, this command creates symlinks for LESS files in the var/view_preprocessed and pub/static folders. This process does not compile LESS files into CSS files.

The following table explains this command’s parameters and values.

Parameter Value Required?
--type Type of source files: [less] (default: “less”)
Currently, LESS is the only file type supported.		 No
--locale Locale code.
To display the list of locale codes, enter bin/magento info:language:list		 No
--area Area (adminhtml for the administrative area, frontend for the storefront). No
--theme Theme name in <VendorName>/<theme-name> format. For example, Magento/blank or Magento/backend. No
<file> Space-separated list of CSS files to convert to LESS without the CSS extension. (Default is css/styles-m css/styles-l, for adminhtml type css/styles css/styles-old) No

For example, to create LESS files for the frontend theme named VendorName/themeName in the en_US locale using a CSS file named <magento_root>/pub/static/frontend/VendorName/themeName/en_US/css/styles-l.css, enter the following command:

bin/magento dev:source-theme:deploy --type="less" --locale="en_US" --area="frontend" --theme="VendorName/themeName" css/styles-l

The following messages display to confirm success:

Processed Area: frontend, Locale: en_US, Theme: VendorName/themeName, File type: less.
-> css/styles-l.less
Successfully processed.

To create LESS files for the adminhtml:

bin/magento dev:source-theme:deploy --locale="en_US" --area="adminhtml" --theme="Magento/backend" css/styles css/styles-old

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