Install node-sass with Homebrew

Project links

• Homepage

Commands and aliases

• sass

Project history

The historical `node-sass` npm package was a Node.js wrapper around LibSass. The Sass team wrote on 26 October 2020 that LibSass and packages built on top of it, including Node Sass, were deprecated because LibSass lacked enough maintainer bandwidth to keep up with Sass and CSS language changes.

Dart Sass 1.0.0 was released on 26 March 2018. The Sass team described that release as the first stable Dart Sass release, published to GitHub, npm, Chocolatey, Homebrew, and pub, with compatibility with the Sass spec test suite and broad compatibility with the Node Sass API.

On 24 July 2024 the Sass team declared Node Sass end-of-life, marked the npm package deprecated, archived its GitHub repository, and recommended migration to Dart Sass. The same post notes that there is no longer an officially supported way to use LibSass from Node.js.

Adoption history

Node Sass mattered because it made Sass common outside the original Ruby ecosystem, especially in JavaScript build pipelines that wanted a fast native compiler. Its retirement was not just a package rename: it marked the JavaScript ecosystem's shift from LibSass bindings to Dart Sass as the maintained reference implementation.

Homebrew Formulae lists node-sass 1.101.0, linked to Dart Sass, with 3,447 installs over 365 days and 3,259 installs on request. That residual use mostly represents people installing a familiar package name to get the maintained `sass` compiler rather than adopting the old Node Sass binding.

How it is used

For new work, package nerds treat this as Dart Sass: run `sass input.scss output.css`, use watch/build scripts, or depend on the JavaScript API from the `sass` package. The Dart Sass README shows `npm install -g sass` for a global executable and `npm install --save-dev sass` for project use, then `require('sass')` and `sass.compile(...)` from Node.

For legacy migrations, the Sass team's short path is to replace `node-sass` in `package.json` with `sass`. Most old `render()` and `renderSync()` callers continue through Dart Sass's legacy JavaScript API, but new code should use the newer compile API because the legacy API is deprecated for Dart Sass 2.0.0.

Why package nerds care

This formula is a naming fossil. It preserves the ecosystem memory of Node Sass while delivering Dart Sass, and it is useful precisely because build tools, READMEs, and muscle memory often say `node-sass` even after the maintained compiler moved on.

Related projects

• Dart Sass
• LibSass
• Ruby Sass
• sass npm package
• sass-embedded

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/node-sass
• https://github.com/sass/dart-sass
• https://sass-lang.com/blog/dart-sass-100-is-released/
• https://sass-lang.com/blog/libsass-is-deprecated/
• https://sass-lang.com/blog/node-sass-is-end-of-life/
• https://www.npmjs.com/package/sass