title: How do I properly compile a new version of bootstrap from source using a bootswatch variables.less file
body: <p>I've been trying to get a theme from bootswatch to compile into a new bootstrap.css file.</p>
  
  <p>On the bootswatch page, I see four files for download: <code>bootstrap.css, bootstrap.min.css, variables.less</code> and <code>bootswatch.less</code>.</p>
  
  <p>I can see I could replace bootstrap.[min.].css with the existing file in my project. But, my project is based on twitter bootstrap 2.3.x, not 2.2.x as bootswatch is using. I don't want to have to worry about different version issues in my markup. This does not seem like the correct way to go if I am trying to utilize the newest versions of bootstrap.</p>
  
  <p>So, I downloaded variables.less and cloned the bootstrap repository from github. After installing the dependencies, I then copy <code>variables.less</code> into the <code>less</code> directory (and overwrite the existing variables.less). If I then run <code>make</code>, it builds a new CSS file into <code>docs/assets/css/bootstrap.css</code>. This looks like it has some of the new things (for example, the font from the bootswatch theme is set inside the h1,h2, etc. tags.).</p>
  
  <p>However, the CSS file never imports the font, so the font cannot be used. In the bootstrap.css file from bootswatch, I see a font import as the very first line in the CSS file. The newly generated file does not have a font import at all.</p>
  
  <p>What step am I missing? Is this the correct way to do things given that the variables.less file is clearly based on 2.2.x and the new boostrap is 2.3.x? I would think it would work because the boostrap authors would probably want to use such a system to assist with backwards compatibility.</p>