support NODE_PATH in standalone build

[SteffenDE]

References #19391.
References #16274.

Right now, when using the standalone build of the TailwindCSS CLI, you cannot use a custom NODE_PATH, but you can when using it via Node.js directly.

A custom NODE_PATH allows you to resolve imports from multiple locations. For example, in Phoenix LiveView, we have a feature where you can write scripts in templates that we extract at compile time to a custom folder and users can import those in their application bundle by saying

import { hooks as colocatedHooks } from "phoenix-colocated/my_app"

where the "phoenix-colocated" folder lives in a different location than the usual node_modules folder. This works fine with the default esbuild setup, as it respects NODE_PATH, so we can pass it a custom location.

We want to also support colocating CSS in templates soon, but the same approach doesn't work with the standalone Tailwind CLI we ship with default Phoenix projects. It works when running Tailwind through Node.js, but we don't want to tell users they need to install it, just to use the feature.

This patch changes the lookup logic for the standalone CLI to also account for NODE_PATH. Note that you can pass multiple paths, that are split according the the OS PATH separator.

[coderabbitai]

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Walkthrough

The Node compile module now expands the NODE_PATH environment variable into multiple paths by splitting it on the system path delimiter for module resolution. The standalone build script no longer injects an explicit NODE_PATH value into the Bun.build definitions. A changelog entry was added noting support for NODE_PATH in the standalone build.

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 2

✅ Passed checks (2 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title directly and accurately describes the main change: adding NODE_PATH support to the standalone Tailwind CLI build.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is well-related to the changeset, providing context about why NODE_PATH support is needed and how it will be used in real-world scenarios.

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[SteffenDE]

Any chance to get this merged? :)

[RobinMalfait]

Thanks! Will be available in the next release, and once merged it will be available in the insiders version soon.

[SteffenDE]

Nice, thank you!