This is something that has been messing with my workflow so hear me out. First, I use CodeKit on my local machine to compile. CodeKit allows me to choose a framework (bootstrap-master > LESS files). I don't want to keep multiple versions of bootstrap-master sitting around on my computer. Preferably, I'd have the most current version with which I'd use to build all of my CSS (regardless of the site I'm working on) by simply pointing to the bootstrap-master directory. However, the inclusion of variables.less in bootstrap-master > bootstrap.less (where it's an import) makes this difficult - variables.less is the ONLY file in bootstrap-master that I need to slightly tweak for each site I create. The variables.less file should not be a default import in bootstrap.less - at least this would be ideal for me. The way things are now, I have to modify bootstrap.less (to tell it not to import variables) and variables.less (to control colors, grid, etc). I'd like to just update all of the bootstrap-master files in one fell swoop without worrying about overwriting my changes to these two files. If variables was not a default import AND it was outside of this framework directory, I could update every file in bootstrap-master without worrying about overwriting anything. I hope I have communicated this in the right way - it seems a bit muddled?