I followed the steps on the Tailwind website to Install TailwindCSS with Ruby on Rails
When I ran bin/dev, I had an issue with foreman…
bin/dev: line 16: exec: foreman: not found
It’s likely a pathing issue, because my gems get installed in vendor/bundle and that’s not in my $PATH. I was able to resolve this by installing foreman via brew, as recommended on StackOverflow (yes, I copy and pasted random code from SO)
brew install foreman
However, I realised that Tailwind had added a bin/dev file which was just calling the commands in the Procfile.dev file. This was just merging the bin/rails server process with the bin/rails tailwindcss:watch so it was on the same pane.
It’s nice, but it’s not necessary.
Using the bin/dev option actually adds a bit of fluff by adding the timestamp and the process name to the beginning of each line:
craig@MacBook-Pro tailwind-example % bin/dev
23:11:14 web.1 | started with pid 100
23:11:14 css.1 | started with pid 101
23:11:16 web.1 | => Booting Puma
23:11:16 web.1 | => Rails 7.1.3.4 application starting in development
23:11:16 web.1 | => Run `bin/rails server --help` for more startup options
23:11:17 web.1 | Puma starting in single mode...
23:11:17 web.1 | * Puma version: 6.4.2 (ruby 3.3.2-p78) ("The Eagle of Durango")
23:11:17 web.1 | * Min threads: 5
23:11:17 web.1 | * Max threads: 5
23:11:17 web.1 | * Environment: development
23:11:17 web.1 | * PID: 100
23:11:17 web.1 | * Listening on http://127.0.0.1:3000
23:11:17 web.1 | * Listening on http://[::1]:3000
23:11:17 web.1 | Use Ctrl-C to stop
23:11:18 css.1 |
23:11:18 css.1 | Rebuilding...
23:11:18 css.1 |
23:11:18 css.1 | Done in 844ms.
23:12:55 css.1 |
23:12:55 css.1 | Rebuilding...
23:12:55 css.1 |
23:12:55 css.1 | Done in 176ms.
We can run these commands separately with no issues:
bin/rails sbin/rails tailwindcss:watchcraig@MacBook-Pro tailwind-example % bin/rails s
=> Booting Puma
=> Rails 7.1.3.4 application starting in development
=> Run `bin/rails server --help` for more startup options
Puma starting in single mode...
* Puma version: 6.4.2 (ruby 3.3.2-p78) ("The Eagle of Durango")
* Min threads: 5
* Max threads: 5
* Environment: development
* PID: 743
* Listening on http://127.0.0.1:3000
* Listening on http://[::1]:3000
Use Ctrl-C to stop
AND
craig@MacBook-Pro tailwind-example % bin/rails tailwindcss:watch
Rebuilding...
Done in 716ms.
Maybe I’m biased because it’s no extra effort for me, since I use tmuxinator and open my projects with a single command. By putting them in separate panes, I was able to completely delete the bin/dev and Procfile.dev files from my codebase.
bin/dev command when I’m used to doing bin/rails isn’t worth it. I imagine it’s worth it for teams or projects with more commands.