Overview

Sass

Stacks44.8K

Followers32.2K

Votes3.0K

GitHub Stars15.3K

Forks2.2K

node-sass

Stacks87

Followers145

Votes0

GitHub Stars8.5K

Forks1.3K

Sass vs node-sass: What are the differences?

Sass and node-sass are both tools that allow developers to use Sass, a CSS extension language, in their projects. However, there are several key differences between the two.

Installation: Sass is a Ruby gem and requires Ruby to be installed on the system. On the other hand, node-sass is a Node.js binding, which means it can be installed using npm without any Ruby dependency.
Performance: Node-sass is generally faster than Sass as it is a C++ binding for LibSass, a popular Sass compiler written in C++. This makes node-sass a better choice for larger projects or projects with tight performance requirements.
Language compatibility: Sass supports both the SCSS (Sassy CSS) and Sass syntaxes. SCSS is a superset of CSS and follows the CSS syntax closely, while Sass has its own syntax with a more concise and indentation-based structure. Node-sass, being a Sass compiler, supports both syntaxes as well.
Reduced memory footprint: Node-sass has a smaller memory footprint compared to Sass. This is because node-sass directly interacts with LibSass, bypassing the need for a Ruby interpreter and reducing the overall memory usage.
Community and support: Sass has been around for longer and has a larger community compared to node-sass. As a result, there are more resources, tutorials, and community support available for Sass. However, node-sass also has an active community and is widely used in the Node.js ecosystem.
Better integration with Node.js ecosystem: Node-sass integrates seamlessly with the Node.js ecosystem and can be easily incorporated into build processes using task runners like Gulp or webpack. This allows for better automation and enables developers to take advantage of the vast Node.js package ecosystem.

In summary, Sass and node-sass are both powerful tools for using Sass in web development. While Sass requires Ruby and has a larger community, node-sass offers better performance, reduced memory footprint, and better integration with the Node.js ecosystem. Depending on the project requirements and developer preferences, either tool can be a suitable choice.

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Advice on Sass, node-sass

Anonymous

CEO at ME!

Jun 17, 2020

Needs adviceon

Sass

Stylus

PostCSS

Originally, I was going to start using @{Sass}|tool:1171| with Parcel, but then I learned about @{Stylus}|tool:1172|, which looked interesting because it can get the property values of something directly instead of through variables, and @{PostCSS}|tool:3339|, which looked interesting because you can customize your Pre/Post-processing. Which tool would you recommend?

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Detailed Comparison

Sass	node-sass
Sass is an extension of CSS3, adding nested rules, variables, mixins, selector inheritance, and more. It's translated to well-formatted, standard CSS using the command line tool or a web-framework plugin.	It is a library that provides binding for Node.js to LibSass, the C version of the popular stylesheet preprocessor, Sass. It allows you to natively compile .scss files to css at incredible speed and automatically via a connect middleware.
-	Natively compile .scss files to css ; Binding for Node.js to LibSass
Statistics
GitHub Stars 15.3K	GitHub Stars 8.5K
GitHub Forks 2.2K	GitHub Forks 1.3K
Stacks 44.8K	Stacks 87
Followers 32.2K	Followers 145
Votes 3.0K	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 613 Variables 594 Mixins 466 Nested rules 410 Maintainable 300 Functions Cons 6 Needs to be compiled	Cons 1 Needs Microsoft BuildTools and Python 2.7 to install
Integrations
No integrations available	Node.js

What are some alternatives to Sass, node-sass?

Less

Less is a CSS pre-processor, meaning that it extends the CSS language, adding features that allow variables, mixins, functions and many other techniques that allow you to make CSS that is more maintainable, themable and extendable.

Stylus

Stylus is a revolutionary new language, providing an efficient, dynamic, and expressive way to generate CSS. Supporting both an indented syntax and regular CSS style.

PostCSS

PostCSS is a tool for transforming CSS with JS plugins. These plugins can support variables and mixins, transpile future CSS syntax, inline images, and more.

Bourbon

Bourbon is a library of pure sass mixins that are designed to be simple and easy to use. No configuration required. The mixins aim to be as vanilla as possible, meaning they should be as close to the original CSS syntax as possible.

Compass

The compass core framework is a design-agnostic framework that provides common code that would otherwise be duplicated across other frameworks and extensions.

CSS Modules

It is a CSS file in which all class names and animation names are scoped locally by default. The key words here are scoped locally. With this, your CSS class names become similar to local variables in JavaScript. It goes into the compiler, and CSS comes out the other side.

astroturf

It lets you write CSS in your JavaScript files without adding any runtime layer, and with your existing CSS processing pipeline.

PreCSS

It combines Sass-like syntactical sugar — like variables, conditionals, and iterators — with emerging CSS features — like logical and custom properties, media query ranges, and image sets.

Animate.css

It is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness.