Use Tailwind without Node.js

I really like Tailwind CSS — it’s beautiful! But…I really don’t want Node.js as a dependency. (As of this writing, I would like to replace the dependency that this very site has on Node.js.) Anyway, there’s a blog post Standalone CLI: Use Tailwind CSS without Node.js that might give me what I’m looking for.

It works by offering a tailwindcss exectutable made with pkg a tool that packages Node.js projects into an executable!

This is a nice compromise because it lets me use the Tailwind watcher workflow.

Get it!

curl -sLO https://github.com/tailwindlabs/tailwindcss/releases/latest/download/tailwindcss-macos-arm64
chmod +x tailwindcss-macos-arm64
mv tailwindcss-macos-arm64 tailwindcss

Use it!

# Create a tailwind.config.js file
./tailwindcss init

touch static/input.css

# Start a watcher
./tailwindcss -i static/input.css -o static/output.css --watch

# Compile and minify your CSS for production
./tailwindcss -i static/input.css -o static/output.css --minify

Let’s give it a go…it works!

This works through the 🪄 magic of the pkg project by the dine folks at Vercel. It looks like pkg does not play nicely with puppeteer just yet.