Closes #13694
Closes #13591

Source Maps Support for Tailwind CSS

This PR adds support for source maps to Tailwind CSS v4 allowing us to track where styles come from whether that be user CSS, imported stylesheets, or generated utilities. This will improve debuggability in browser dev tools and gives us a good foundation for producing better error messages. I'll go over the details on how end users can enable source maps, any limitations in our implementation, changes to the internal compile(…) API, and some details and reasoning around the implementation we chose.

Usage

CLI

Source maps can be enabled in the CLI by using the command line argument --map which will generate an inline source map comment at the bottom of your CSS. A separate file may be generated by passing a file name to --map:

# Generates an inline source map
npx tailwindcss -i input.css -o output.css --map

# Generates a separate source map file
npx tailwindcss -i input.css -o output.css --map output.css.map

PostCSS

Source maps are supported when using Tailwind as a PostCSS plugin in development mode only. They may or may not be enabled by default depending on your build tool. If they are not you may be able to configure them within your PostCSS config:

// package.json
{
  // …
  "postcss": {
    "map": { "inline": true },
    "plugins": {
      "@tailwindcss/postcss": {},
    },
  }
}

Vite

Source maps are supported when using the Tailwind CSS Vite plugin in development mode only by enabling the css.devSourcemap setting:

import tailwindcss from "@tailwindcss/vite";
import { defineConfig } from "vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [tailwindcss()],
  css: {
    devSourcemap: true,
  },
})

Now when a CSS file is requested by the browser it'll have an inline source map comment that the browser can use.

Limitations

• Production build source maps are currently disabled due to a bug in Lightning CSS. See Prevent new lines written by write_str from breaking source maps parcel-bundler/lightningcss#971 for more details.
• In Vite, minified CSS build source maps are not supported at all. See CSS sourcemaps vitejs/vite#2830 for more details.
• In PostCSS, minified CSS source maps are not supported. This is due to the complexity required around re-associating every AST node with a location in the generated, optimized CSS. This complexity would also have a non-trivial performance impact.

Testing

Here's how to test the source map functionality in different environments:

Testing the CLI

1. Setup typical project that the CLI can use and with sources to scan.

@import "tailwindcss";

@utilty my-custom-utility {
  color: red;
}

/* to test `@apply` */
.card {
  @apply bg-white text-center shadow-md;
}

2. Build with source maps:

bun /path/to/tailwindcss/packages/@tailwindcss-cli/src/index.ts --input input.css -o output.css --map

3. Open Chrome DevTools, inspect an element with utility classes, and you should see rules pointing to input.css or node_modules/tailwindcss/index.css

Testing with Vite

Testing in Vite will require building and installing necessary files under dist/*.tgz.

1. Create a Vite project and enable source maps in vite.config.js:

import tailwindcss from "@tailwindcss/vite";
import { defineConfig } from "vite";

export default defineConfig({
  plugins: [tailwindcss()],
  css: {
    // This line is required for them to work
    devSourcemap: true,
  },
})

2. Add a component that uses Tailwind classes and custom CSS:

// ./src/app.jsx
export default function App() {
  return (
    <div className="bg-blue-500 my-custom-class">
      Hello World
    </div>
  )
}

/* ./src/styles.css */
@import "tailwindcss";

@utilty my-custom-utility {
  color: red;
}

/* to test `@apply` */
.card {
  @apply bg-white text-center shadow-md;
}

3. Run npm run dev, open DevTools, and inspect elements to verify source mapping works for both utility classes and custom CSS.

Testing with PostCSS CLI

1. Create a test file and update your PostCSS config:

/* input.css */
@import "tailwindcss";

@layer components {
  .card {
    @apply p-6 rounded-lg shadow-lg;
  }
}

// package.json
{
  // …
  "postcss": {
    "map": {
      "inline": true
    },
    "plugins": {
      "/path/to/tailwindcss/packages/packages/@tailwindcss-postcss/src/index.ts": {}
    }
  }
}

2. Run PostCSS through Bun:

bunx --bun postcss ./src/index.css -o out.css

3. Inspect the output CSS - it should include an inline source map comment at the bottom.

Testing with PostCSS + Next.js

Testing in Next.js will require building and installing necessary files under dist/*.tgz. However, I've not been able to get CSS source maps to work in Next.js without this hack:

const nextConfig: NextConfig = {
  // next.js overwrites config.devtool so we prevent it from doing so
  // please don't actually do this…
  webpack: (config) =>
    Object.defineProperty(config, "devtool", {
      get: () => "inline-source-map",
      set: () => {},
    }),
};

This is definitely not supported and also doesn't work with turbopack. This can be used to test them temporarily but I suspect that they just don't work there.

Manual source map analysis

You can analyze source maps using Evan Wallace's Source Map Visualization tool which will help to verify the accuracy and quality of source maps. This is what I used extensively while developing this implementation.

It'll help verify that custom, user CSS maps back to itself in the input, that generated utilities all map back to @tailwind utilities;, that source locations from imported files are also handled correctly, etc… It also highlights the ranges of stuff so it's easy to see if there are off-by-one errors.

It's easiest to use inline source maps with this tool because you can take the CSS file and drop it on the page and it'll analyze it while showing the file content.

If you're using Vite you'll want to access the CSS file with ?direct at the end so you don't get a JS module back.

Implementation

The source map implementation follows the ECMA-426 specification and includes several key components to aid in that goal:

Source Location Tracking

Each emittable AST node in the compilation pipeline tracks two types of source locations:

• src: Original source location - [source file, start offset, end offset]
• dst: Generated source location - [output file, start offset, end offset]

This dual tracking allows us to maintain mappings between the original source and generated output for things like user CSS, generated utilities, uses of @apply, and tracking theme variables.

It is important to note that source locations for nodes never overlap within a file which helps simplify source map generation. As such each type of node tracks a specific piece of itself rather than its entire "block":

Windows line endings when parsing CSS

Because our AST tracks nodes through offsets we must ensure that any mutations to the file do not change the lenth of the string. We were previously replacing \r\n with \n (see filter code points from the spec) — which changes the length of the string and all offsets may end up incorrect. The CSS parser was updated to handle the CRLF token directly by skipping over the \r and letting remaining code handle \n as it did previously. Some additional tweaks were required when "peeking" the input but those changes were fairly small.

Tracking of imports

Source maps need paths to the actual imported stylesheets but the resolve step for stylesheets happens inside the call to loadStylesheet which make the file path unavailable to us. Because of this the loadStylesheet API was augmented such that it has to return a path property that we can then use to identify imported sources. I've also made the same change to the loadModule API for consistency but nothing currently uses this property.

The path property likely makes base redundant but elminating that (if we even want to) is a future task.

Optimizing the AST

Our optimization pass may intoduce some nodes, for example, fallbacks we create for @property. These nodes are linked back to @tailwind utilities as ultimately that is what is responsible for creating them.

Line Offset Tables

A key component to our source map generation is the line offset table, which was inspired by some ESBuild internals. It stores a sorted list of offsets for the start of each line allowing us to translate offsets to line/column Positions in O(log N) time and from Positions to offsets in O(1) time. Creation of the table takes O(N) time.

This means that we can store code point offsets for source locations and not have to worry about computing or tracking line/column numbers during parsing and serialization. Only when a source map is generated do these offsets need to be computed. This ensures the performance penalty when not using source maps is minimal.

Source Map Generation

The source map returned by buildSourceMap() is designed to follow the ECMA-426 spec. Because that spec is not completely finalized we consider the result of buildSourceMap() to be internal API that may change as the spec chamges.

The produces source map is a "decoded" map such that all sources and mappings are in an object graph. A library like source-map-js must be used to convert this to an encoded source map of the right version where mappings are encoded with base 64 VLQs.

Any specific integration (Vite, PostCSS, etc…) can then use toSourceMap() from @tailwindcss/node to convert from the internal source map to an spec-compliant encoded source map that can be understood by other tools.

Handling minification in Lightning

Since we use Lightning CSS for optimization, and it takes in an input map, we generate an encoded source map that we then pass to lightning. The output source map from lighting itself is then passed back in during the second optimization pass. The final map is then passed from lightning to the CLI (but not Vite or PostCSS — see the limitations section for details).

In some cases we have to "fix up" the output CSS. When this happens we use magic-string to do the replacement in a way that is trackable and @amppproject/remapping to map that change back onto the original source map. Once the need for these fix ups disappear these dependencies can go away.

Notes:

• The accuracy of source maps run though lightning is reduced as it only tracks on a per-rule level. This is sufficient enough for browser dev tools so should be fine.
• Source maps during optimization do not function properly at this time because of a bug in Lightning CSS regarding license comments. Once this bug is fixed they will start working as expected.

How source locations flow through the system

1. During initial CSS parsing, source locations are preserved.
2. During parsing these source locations are also mapped to the destinations which supports an optimization for when no utilities are generated.
3. Throughout the compilation process, transformations maintain source location data
4. Generated utilities are explicitly pointed to @tailwind utilities unless generated by @apply.
5. When optimization is enabled, source maps are remapped through lightningcss
6. Final source maps are written in the requested format (inline or separate file)