Mix tasks for installing and invoking tailwindcss via the stand-alone tailwindcss cli

Note: The stand-alone Tailwind client bundles first-class Tailwind packages within the precompiled executable. For third-party Tailwind plugin support (e.g. DaisyUI), the node package must be used. See the Tailwind Node.js installation instructions if you require third-party plugin support.

If you are going to build assets in production, then you add tailwind as dependency on all environments but only start it in dev:

def deps do
  [
    {:tailwind, "~> 0.2", runtime: Mix.env() == :dev}
  ]
end

However, if your assets are precompiled during development, then it only needs to be a dev dependency:

def deps do
  [
    {:tailwind, "~> 0.2", only: :dev}
  ]
end

Once installed, change your config/config.exs to pick your tailwind version of choice:

config :tailwind, version: "3.2.4"

Now you can install tailwind by running:

$ mix tailwind.install

or if your platform isn't officially supported by Tailwind, you can supply a third party path to the binary the installer wants (beware that we cannot guarantee the compatibility of any third party executable):

$ mix tailwind.install https://people.freebsd.org/~dch/pub/tailwind/v3.2.6/tailwindcss-freebsd-x64

And invoke tailwind with:

$ mix tailwind default

The executable is kept at _build/tailwind-TARGET. Where TARGET is your system target architecture.

The first argument to tailwind is the execution profile. You can define multiple execution profiles with the current directory, the OS environment, and default arguments to the tailwind task:

config :tailwind,
  version: "3.2.4",
  default: [
    args: ~w(
      --config=tailwind.config.js
      --input=css/app.css
      --output=../priv/static/assets/app.css
    ),
    cd: Path.expand("../assets", __DIR__)
  ]

When mix tailwind default is invoked, the task arguments will be appended to the ones configured above. Note profiles must be configured in your config/config.exs, as tailwind runs without starting your application (and therefore it won't pick settings in config/runtime.exs).

To add tailwind to an application using Phoenix, you will need Phoenix v1.6+ and the following steps.

First add it as a dependency in your mix.exs:

def deps do
  [
    {:phoenix, "~> 1.6"},
    {:tailwind, "~> 0.1.8", runtime: Mix.env() == :dev}
  ]
end

Also, in mix.exs, add tailwind to the assets.deploy alias for deployments (with the --minify option):

"assets.deploy": ["tailwind default --minify", ..., "phx.digest"]

Now let's change config/config.exs to tell tailwind to use configuration in assets/tailwind.config.js for building our css bundle into priv/static/assets. We'll also give it our assets/css/app.css as our css entry point:

config :tailwind,
  version: "3.2.4",
  default: [
    args: ~w(
      --config=tailwind.config.js
      --input=css/app.css
      --output=../priv/static/assets/app.css
    ),
    cd: Path.expand("../assets", __DIR__)
  ]

Make sure the "assets" directory from priv/static is listed in the :only option for Plug.Static in your lib/my_app_web/endpoint.ex

If your Phoenix application is using an umbrella structure, you should specify the web application's asset directory in the configuration:

config :tailwind,
  version: "3.2.4",
  default: [
    args: ...,
    cd: Path.expand("../apps/<folder_ending_with_web>/assets", __DIR__)
  ]

For development, we want to enable watch mode. So find the watchers configuration in your config/dev.exs and add:

  tailwind: {Tailwind, :install_and_run, [:default, ~w(--watch)]}

Note we are enabling the file system watcher.

Finally, run the command:

$ mix tailwind.install

This command installs Tailwind and updates your assets/css/app.css and assets/js/app.js with the necessary changes to start using Tailwind right away. It also generates a default configuration file called assets/tailwind.config.js for you. This is the file we referenced when we configured tailwind in config/config.exs. See mix help tailwind.install to learn more.

Copyright (c) 2022 Chris McCord. Copyright (c) 2021 Wojtek Mach, José Valim.

tailwind source code is licensed under the MIT License.