2023-03-01 20:46:05 +01:00
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---
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title: 'Embedded Sass is Live'
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author: Natalie Weizenbaum
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2023-03-03 16:39:31 +01:00
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date: 2022-02-01 2:00:00 -8
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2023-03-01 20:46:05 +01:00
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---
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After several years of planning and development, I'm excited to finally announce
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the stable release of Embedded Dart Sass along with its first official wrapper,
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the [`sass-embedded`] package available now on npm!
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[`sass-embedded`]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/sass-embedded
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Embedded Sass is an ongoing effort to make a highly-performant Sass library
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available to as many different languages as possible, starting with Node.js.
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Although Node.js already has access to the pure-JS `sass` package, the nature of
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JavaScript inherently limits how quickly this package can process large Sass
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files especially in asynchronous mode. We expect `sass-embedded` to be a major
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boon to developers for whom compilation speed is a concern, particularly the
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remaining users of `node-sass` for whom performance has been a major reason to
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avoid Dart Sass.
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The `sass-embedded` package fully supports the [new JS API] as well as the
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[legacy API] other than a few cosmetic options. You can use it as a drop-in
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replacement for the `sass` package, and it should work with all the same build
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plugins and libraries. Note that `sass-embedded` is a bit faster in
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_asynchronous_ mode than it is in synchronous mode (whereas the `sass` package
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was faster in synchronous mode). For substantial Sass files, running
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`sass-embedded` in either mode will generally be much faster than `sass`.
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[new JS API]: https://sass-lang.com/documentation/js-api#usage
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[legacy API]: https://sass-lang.com/documentation/js-api#legacy-api
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In order to limit the confusion about which version of which package supports
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which feature, the `sass-embedded` package will always have the same version as
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the `sass` package. When new features are added to the JS API, they'll be
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supported at the same time in both packages, and when new language features are
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added to Sass they'll always be included in a new `sass-embedded` release
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straight away.
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## How it Works
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Embedded Sass is composed of three parts:
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1. [The compiler], a Dart executable that wraps Dart Sass and does the actual
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heavy lifting of parsing and compiling the files. Dart native executables are
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generally much faster than JavaScript, so using them for the
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computationally-intensive work of stylesheet evaluation is where Embedded
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Sass gets its speed.
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2. [The host], a library in any language (in this case JavaScript) that provides a
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usable end-user API for invoking the compiler. The host provides callers with
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configuration options, including the ability to define custom importers and
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Sass functions that are used by the compilation.
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3. [The protocol], a [protocol-buffer]-based specification of how the host and
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the compiler communicate with one another. This communication happens over
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the standard input and output streams of the compiler executable, which is
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invoked by the host to perform each compilation.
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[The compiler]: https://github.com/sass/dart-sass-embedded
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[The host]: https://github.com/sass/embedded-host-node
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[The protocol]: https://github.com/sass/embedded-protocol
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[protocol-buffer]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_Buffers
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## Other Languages
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Embedded Sass was designed in part as a way for languages other than JavaScript
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to have access to the full power of Sass compilation with custom importers and
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functions, similarly to how C++ wrappers for [LibSass] worked in the past. We
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hope that community members will use this protocol to implement embedded hosts
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for many other popular frontend languages. If you end up doing so, message us
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[on Twitter] or [Gitter] and we'll link it on this site!
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[LibSass]: https://sass-lang.com/libsass
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[on Twitter]: https://twitter.com/SassCSS
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[Gitter]: https://gitter.im/sass/sass
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