'lessc' is not recognized as an internal or external command, Yii2 WAMP win8 - less

Question

So i normally work on external servers, but decided to set up a local environment in the form of WAMPserver on my windows 8.1 computer.
From (git bash) console, i can run lessc without a problem, but when i install Yii2, and attempt to process .less it says it can't find the command.
AssetConverter command 'lessc "C:/wamp/www/basic/web/css/site.less" "C:/wamp/www/basic/web/css/site.css" --no-color --source-map' failed with exit code 1:
STDOUT:
STDERR:
'lessc' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
Now as far as i can tell, this should work. In fact, when i run that same command from console it works just fine. Am i missing a step here? Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

I fixed it just now.
How should you do?
Make sure you can run lessc in cmd windows.If you can't,install it with node.js Install lessc with node.js
Make sure lessc path in system path.Mine is C:\Users\l7861\AppData\Roaming\npm or you can type where lessc in cmd windows to find it.
Make sure you can see lessc path in path_info().If you can't restart your apache server.
Finally you don't need to add addassetManager in config never~~~~~
This below is a discovery process.
I just thought it is a bug on yii2 at first.So I debug it with Phpstrom.And I saw this line:path\to\vendor\yiisoft\yii2\web\AssetConverter.php 91
$command = Yii::getAlias($command);
$command = strtr($command, [
'{from}' => escapeshellarg("$basePath/$asset"),
'{to}' => escapeshellarg("$basePath/$result"),
]);
$descriptor = [
1 => ['pipe', 'w'],
2 => ['pipe', 'w'],
];
$pipes = [];
$proc = proc_open($command, $descriptor, $pipes, $basePath);
$stdout = stream_get_contents($pipes[1]);
$stderr = stream_get_contents($pipes[2]);
foreach ($pipes as $pipe) {
fclose($pipe);
}
$status = proc_close($proc);
if ($status === 0) {
Yii::trace("Converted $asset into $result:\nSTDOUT:\n$stdout\nSTDERR:\n$stderr", __METHOD__);
} elseif (YII_DEBUG) {
throw new Exception("AssetConverter command '$command' failed with exit code $status:\nSTDOUT:\n$stdout\nSTDERR:\n$stderr");
} else {
Yii::error("AssetConverter command '$command' failed with exit code $status:\nSTDOUT:\n$stdout\nSTDERR:\n$stderr", __METHOD__);
}
return $status === 0
}
Only if $status is not 0,then you got a error message.
And that usually means $command has something wrong.
When I ran to here, I could see it is 'lessc "path/to/frontend/web/less/main.less" "path/to/frontend/web/less/main.css" --no-color';
And I ran it in cmd.Then css file was created by it.
I wrote a similar code below like that function
$command='lessc "path/to/frontend/web/less/main.less" "path/to/frontend/web/less/main.css" --no-color';
$basePath="path/to/frontend/web";
$descriptor = [
1 => ['pipe', 'w'],
2 => ['pipe', 'w'],
];
$pipes = [];
$process = proc_open($command, $descriptor, $pipes /* $cwd, $env */ );
print_r($pipes);
$stdout = stream_get_contents($pipes[1]);
echo mb_convert_encoding($stdout, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-8,GBK,GB2312,BIG5' );
$stderr = stream_get_contents($pipes[2]);
echo mb_convert_encoding($stderr, 'UTF-8', 'UTF-8,GBK,GB2312,BIG5' );
if (is_resource($process)) {
fwrite($pipes[1], '<?php print_r($_ENV); ?>');
fclose($pipes[1]);
echo stream_get_contents($pipes[2]);
fclose($pipes[2]);
$return_value = proc_close($process);
echo "command returned $return_value\n";
}
And ran it in browser.Then I got a error "lessc is not recognized as an internal or external command".
So I chang config file config/main.php,
return [
'vendorPath' => dirname(dirname(__DIR__)) . '/vendor',
'components' => [
'cache' => [
'class' => 'yii\caching\FileCache',
],
'assetManager' => [
'converter' => [
'class' => 'yii\web\AssetConverter',
'commands' => [
'less' => ['css', 'lessc {from} {to} --no-color'],
],
],
],
],
'name' => 'FavorTGD',
];
I got a same a same message.So I check out php_info(),there no lessc program in path.there there.That all you need is just restart your apache.
And delete assetManager in main.php

Answer 2

Ended up fixing it by changing the command to reference the lessc.cmd directly
'assetManager'=>[
'converter' => [
'class' => 'yii\web\AssetConverter',
'commands' => [
'less' => ['css', 'c:\path\to\lessc.cmd {from} {to} --no-color'],
],
],
],
Not to happy about the fix, because this means i will need to change my settings when i go 'live', but nothing else worked. I tried symlinking it into the yii directory, commands directory, etc.. but no good.