Illegal hardware instruction error on macOS 15.3.1 (Intel Xeon) with standalone CLI

[kubada]

When running ./tailwindcss init on macOS 15.3.1 (24D70) with an Intel Xeon CPU, I encounter zsh: illegal hardware instruction. The binary is the official macOS-x64 version from the releases page (SHA-256 verified).

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Download tailwindcss-macos-x64 from v4.0.12 release
2. Make executable: chmod +x tailwindcss-macos-x64
3. Run ./tailwindcss-macos-x64 init

Expected behavior
Configuration file tailwind.config.js should be generated without errors.

System Info

• macOS Version: 15.3.1 (24D70)
• Kernel: Darwin 24.3.0 (x86_64)
• CPU: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2697 v2 @ 2.70GHz

  machdep.cpu.features: FPU VME DE PSE TSC MSR PAE MCE CX8 APIC SEP MTRR PGE MCA CMOV PAT PSE36 CLFSH DS ACPI     MMX FXSR SSE SSE2 SS HTT TM PBE SSE3 PCLMULQDQ DTES64 MON DSCPL VMX SMX EST TM2 SSSE3 CX16 TPR PDCM SSE4.1 SSE4.2 x2APIC POPCNT AES PCID XSAVE OSXSAVE TSCTMR AVX1.0 RDRAND F16C

• Binary Check:

  $ shasum -a 256 tailwindcss-macos-x64
  1fefebe593065e5f44306290e9b5dc6e1ca0bd941bdfbcd2aa796de6ce3da5f3  tailwindcss-macos-x64
  
  $ file tailwindcss-macos-x64
  Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64
  
  $ otool -hv tailwindcss-macos-x64
  Mach header
        magic  cputype cpusubtype  caps    filetype ncmds sizeofcmds      flags
  MH_MAGIC_64   X86_64        ALL  0x00     EXECUTE    22       2240   NOUNDEFS DYLDLINK TWOLEVEL BINDS_TO_WEAK PIE MH_HAS_TLV_DESCRIPTORS

[wongjn]

The init command no longer exists in v4. Configuration is done in the input CSS file instead of any tailwind.config.js.

[kubada]

So, starting with v4, the correct command to execute is

./tailwindcss-macos-x64 -i PATH/input.css -o PATH/output.css

But does that mean there is a problem with the CLI?

Or did I misunderstand you?

[wongjn]

That is the correct command, but the error you are recieving means there does seem to be a problem with the CLI binary you downloaded and your machine.

[julik]

Filed an issue here #17259 For now I've resorted to use the in-browser tailwind for dev.

[kubada]

thx. in-browser? Can you give more details?

[julik]

This approach basically https://tailwindcss.com/docs/installation/play-cdn but it seems the preflight on it disables borders 😢 so I will be waiting patiently for a new release.

[julik]

It seems we are... out of luck 😢 Bun no longer works on macOS 12 (I'd say too early because Monterey was still on security updates at least until past autumn), which means that we just can't use the binary. See #17259 (comment)