"lessify" a CSS color theme - css

Question

I've inherited a project with a ton of CSS and been assigned the task of modifying it so the color palette can easily be changed.
I've immediately thought of using a CSS preprocessor, tried less and easily switched the colors for variables, so I just have to define a base color and can switch the color theme.
The problem is, every time I switch the color theme I have to either overwrite colors.less with the new color settings or modify the colors.less import in a ton of files.
What I want is to end up with a single file with a lot of imports (basically one per component or set of components), and on that file when I import colors-red.less instead of colors-blue.less all the components imported right after use the red palette so the theme compiled is red instead of blue, for example.
The problem I am having is that the component files do not get the "globals" with the color definitions so I can't compile the base file that imports those files.
I've read there is the possibility of using "partials" (files starting with _ that won't get compiled independently but imported and then compiled), but my compiler seems to be ignoring this feature, and the eclipse plugin I use for editing and verifying less files also complains about the color variables not being defined on those partials.
How can I can get the partials to work? Is there a better approach to do this task?

Answer 1

Stil, they won't be defined on the imported files, just on the main file, so >compilation will break on the imported files. You see what I mean?
Nope? example:
mixins.less:
.mixin()
{
color: #color;
}
variables.less:
#color: orange;
project.less:
#import "mixins";
#import "variables";
p {
.mixin();
}
Now running lessc project.less outputs:
p {
color:orange;
}
Now i change to content of project.less as follows:
#import "mixins";
#import "variables";
p {
.mixin();
}
#color: red;
Then running lessc project.less outputs:
p {
color:red;
}