Build Tailwind v4 locally with Docker

I had some issues setting up Tailwind v4 build locally with Docker.

Key Changes from Tailwind v3

First, it was all the changes from version 3:

• No more init step: Running the init command will get you an error
• No need for tailwind.config.js file

Source Path Issue

Main changes from earlier versions are covered in this discussion on Tailwind’s GitHub page: “Beginner tutorial for setting up tailwind v4 using the standalone CLI”

Recommended is to add source("../") to the import, so Tailwind knows where to find the files.

Root Directory Bug

But even doing that, I had issues building the CSS file.

As it turned out, there was a bug in Tailwind which was causing the issue and was addressed here: Fix resolve_globs crash when at root directory

Basically, the build process was crashing when the build took place in root.

Changing Working Directory

By checking the tailwind CLI options, I found out about the cwd option. It lets you change the working directory where the command looks for files.

By adding that, I removed the source from the CSS file.

Working Solution

Putting it all together, here’s my style.css and Dockerfile for building Tailwind locally:

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

# Dockerfile
FROM node:alpine
WORKDIR /tailwind
RUN npm init -y && npm install tailwindcss @tailwindcss/cli

CMD npx @tailwindcss/cli --cwd /templates -i /src/style.css -o /dst/style.css --watch