Error: lessc 1.3.0 is too old. At least lessc 1.3.1 is required - when installing Rethink DB

Question

I was following the tutorial about installing RethinkDB on OSX but got stuck when I ran

./configure --fetch protobuf --fetch v8

* Detecting system configuration
Bash:                           3.2.51(1)-release
Use ccache:                     no
C++ Compiler:                   CLANG 5.1 (/usr/bin/c++)
Host System:                    x86_64-apple-darwin13.1.0
Build System:                   Darwin 13.1.0 x86_64
Cross-compiling:                no
Host Operating System:          Darwin
Without tcmalloc:               yes
Build client drivers:           no
Build Architecture:             x86_64
stdlib:                         -lc++
Precompiled web assets:         no
Protobuf compiler:              external/protobuf_2.5.0
Node.js package manager:        /usr/local/bin/npm
LESS css:                       no
* Error: lessc 1.3.0 is too old. At least lessc 1.3.1 is required

* Aborting configure

I did run

npm install less 

to make sure that was fine. While searching for clues I found this

which says that lessc is a compiler. But I Googled various related phrases and could not find how to update or further troubleshoot.

Answer 1

The RethinkDB build system knows how to fetch most of the dependencies.

You can add --fetch less when configuring:

./configure --fetch protobuf --fetch v8 --fetch lessc

Or simply use --allow-fetch, which instructs make to fetch all the missing dependencies:

./configure --allow-fetch

Another alternative is to use the source distribution: http://download.rethinkdb.com/dist/rethinkdb-1.12.3.tgz

That tarball contains pre-built web-assets, alleviating the need for lessc.