node-sass Discontinued Maintenance

· 1 min read

Recently while looking at dependency package upgrades for an old project, I noticed that node-sass has been discontinued from maintenance, so I’m documenting this specifically.

Main Reasons

1. Insufficient Maintenance Manpower

  • The recent maintenance team no longer has enough bandwidth (energy and time) to continue updating the project
  • node-sass hasn’t had a new release version for a year and a half

2. Technical Evolution Process

  • node-sass was the first official Sass compiler available in the JavaScript ecosystem
  • It’s essentially a Node.js wrapper for LibSass
  • Now the official recommendation is to use Dart Sass as the primary implementation

3. Current Status

  • The npm package has been marked as deprecated
  • The GitHub repository has been archived to avoid confusion with active Sass repositories
  • The underlying LibSass implementation:
    • Although deprecated, it hasn’t completely reached end-of-life
    • Maintainer Marcel Greter still occasionally makes fixes
    • There’s no officially supported way to use this implementation from Node.js

Migration Recommendation

If you’re currently still using node-sass, the official strongly recommends migrating to the primary implementation Dart Sass.

Historical Significance

This change marks an important transition in the Sass ecosystem:

  1. Initially developed in the Ruby community
  2. node-sass helped it take root in the JavaScript ecosystem
  3. Now shifting to Dart Sass as the primary implementation

Reference Sources

Authors
Developer, digital product enthusiast, tinkerer, sharer, open source lover