Do I need to recompile LESS to upgrade Font Awesome icons? - css

Question

I'm very confused about LESS and in particular, the Font Awesome local files in a template I'm using.
I apparently have Font Awesome 4.3 and I've just downloaded 4.7. Of the files common to my project and the downloaded zip file, I'v overwritten the fonts and the less folders. Shouldn't that be enough to have my project use the latest icon set? - It's not as the old icons are working, but the new ones are not.
If I'm not recompiling less (do I even have to???), what else would I need to look for to get the new icons working?
EDIT:
In the main css file for the template, I've found some code related to Font Awesome:
#font-face {
font-family: 'FontAwesome';
src: url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?v=4.3.0');
src: url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.eot?#iefix&v=4.3.0') format('embedded-opentype'), url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff2?v=4.3.0') format('woff2'), url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.woff?v=4.3.0') format('woff'), url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.ttf?v=4.3.0') format('truetype'), url('dev-plugins/fonts/fontawesome-webfont.svg?v=4.3.0#fontawesomeregular') format('svg');
font-weight: normal;
font-style: normal;
In that same file is reference to the FA icons - example:
.fa-times-circle-o:before {
content: "\f05c";
}
.fa-check-circle-o:before {
content: "\f05d";
}
So am now assuming my whole template needs recompiling?

Answer 1

I've worked it out by doing the following:
access the source files for the template
replace the Font Awesome LESS files with the latest version from their zip download
replace the Font Awesome font files with the latest
with the new files in place, re compile the main CSS LESS file
overwrite the outputted CSS with the one in my project
I'm using using Windows so I used WinLess to compile the LESS file.
So the answer to my question is: yes - I did need to recompile some LESS because the Font Awesome details are embedded (for reasons beyond me) in the main CSS file.