PostCSS is out of date due to cssnext about cloudfour.com-patterns

[erikjung]

I wonder if we should use this instead: https://github.com/cssnext/postcss-cssnext

@tylersticka @lyzadanger Thoughts? It might free us up from these dependency blockers.

[tylersticka]

I believe I mildly protested using cssnext instead of the individual PostCSS plugins as-needed way back when because of this very issue. It seems like it would be simpler to just add whichever of the dozen or so dependencies we actually need from cssnext rather than having to manage a middle-man dependency of questionable convenience (questionable because we've now arguably spent as much time figuring out what to do with it being out of date as we would have installing those modules individually).

But, as before, I don't feel like cssnext is awful. I see it as a convenience module, and this process seems inconvenient, which is why I'd question its usefulness again. But not the end of the world either way.

[erikjung]

It seems like it would be simpler to just add whichever of the dozen or so dependencies we actually need from cssnext rather than having to manage a middle-man dependency of questionable convenience (questionable because we've now arguably spent as much time figuring out what to do with it being out of date as we would have installing those modules individually).

The appeal of cssnext for me has more to do with the convenience of someone else curating that list of plugins to keep up with the spec. This holdup isn't really the fault of cssnext itself, but with some of the plugins it uses (so in theory, this same issue could arise even without the abstraction of PostCSS if we were using those offending plugins.)

I would like to monitor the development of this postcss-cssnext package though:

The cssnext package will have a major release soon in order to introduce a minor but breaking changes in the Node.js API, but you will get the same tool as before. The nice thing is: cssnext will use postcss-cssnext under the hood.

[tylersticka]

This holdup isn't really the fault of cssnext itself, but with some of the plugins it uses (so in theory, this same issue could arise even without the abstraction of PostCSS if we were using those offending plugins.)

Sure, except I'd argue we'd be more empowered to resolve it (by being able to cherry-pick what we do or don't need). Middle-man packages like cssnext are convenient until the day they aren't, and then they're an obstacle.

Again, I don't hate cssnext. Just my two cents.

[erikjung]

Noting this commit here for reference: postcss/postcss-import@0626939#diff-168726dbe96b3ce427e7fedce31bb0bc

In short: the new version of postcss-import that works with PostCSS 5.0 isn't going to work on our machines (Node 0.10), so I guess we'll just close this until that issue can be sorted out.