Why install the Vite plugin as a dependency and not dev dependency?

[bertday]

Hello! I'm newer to Tailwind and wanted to ask about the installing using Vite page. The second step is to run this command:

npm install tailwindcss @tailwindcss/vite

Installing tailwindcss that way makes sense to me, but wouldn't installing @tailwindcss/vite without --save-dev tell Vite to bundle it into your distributable? That seems unnecessary to me, but please let me know if I'm misunderstanding!

[wongjn]

From a maintainer in Discord:

It just doesn't really matter. If you want it to be in your devDependencies then you can put it there 👍
Why the change was made? Just fewer characters and doesn't matter anyway.

[bertday]

Thank you @wongjn ! I'm just curious, why doesn't it matter? Is it because of how Vite bundling works?

Edit: I just saw what you said that that was from a maintainer! I can head over to Discord and ask; thank you for passing that along!

[wongjn]

Yes, it's how Vite bundling works. What goes into the compiled bundle is independent of whether the dependency was in devDependency or not - Vite does not take that into consideration.