V4 Alpha 27/28 - --watch command does not work on the input css file (config file)

[pinzonjulian]

What version of Tailwind CSS are you using?

v4.0.0.alpha28 (also tried on alpha27)

What build tool (or framework if it abstracts the build tool) are you using?

Tailwind CLI executable only.

What version of Node.js are you using?

None. I'm using the Standalone CLI

What browser are you using?

Not relevant

What operating system are you using?

macOS Sonoma 14.6.1

Reproduction URL

Uploading the whole executable to a Git repo doesn't make much sense but here are the instructions to reproduce the issue locally:

1. Create a new directory for the test
2. cd into that directory
3. Download the version of the executable appropriate for your OS. Assuming your version is macos-arm64
4. run chmod +x tailwindcss-macos-arm64
5. run mv tailwindcss-macos-arm64 tailwindcss4alpha28. I've named the executable with the specific version to make it more explicit
6. Create an empty input.css file
7. Create an empty output.css file
8. Add @import "tailwindcss"; to the input.css file
9. Run ./tailwindcss4alpha28 --input input.css --output output.css --watch
10. 🚨 Check the output.css file. Tailwind classes should be present but are not.
11. Run ./tailwindcss4alpha28 --input input.css --output output.css. Note that this time it's not using the --watch flag
12. ✅ Check the output.css file. Tailwind classes are present.

Describe your issue

We've been trying to make the Tailwind 4 alphas work in Rails but noticed that the watch command isn't working when using the Standalone CLI.

rails/tailwindcss-rails#419

After some debugging we realised that the problem is not coming from our Rails implementation but from the executable provided by Tailwind.

[pinzonjulian]

I've updated the title to also include the regular CLI which also doesn't support --watch.

I went back to the article announcing v4 and realised it doesn't mention the --watch flag. Is there a reason for it? Is watch mode not supported just yet?

[adamwathan]

I can't seem to reproduce this, --watch is working as expected for me:

Untitled.3.mov

Trying to figure out what might be different in our setups — is there any chance you could throw up a whole project that's not working for you so I can test here and try to narrow it down?

[pinzonjulian]

Thanks to your video I've narrowed down the problem a bit more and I have a few new clues.

If I change the input css file, the watcher kicks off, says it's "Done in X ms" but the changes are not present in the output file. However, if I create an html file and add an html class to it, the watcher kicks off and the new classes are present in the output.css.

So, the watcher is specifically not working on the input file

Check out this video (it was too big for GItHub): https://youtu.be/bdup23ipD4c

Also I tried this on a different computer and I get the same results.

I've put up a repo for ease of reproduction here:
https://github.com/pinzonjulian/tailwind_css_cli_watch_bug

You'll just need to add the executables