Re: Tree-sitter api

[Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com>]

> On Sep 5, 2021, at 9:45 AM, Tuấn-Anh Nguyễn <ubolonton@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2021 at 10:31 PM Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I packaged language definitions into dynamic modules: the system is there, why not take advantage of it? Do you think this approach can be improved in some way?
> 
> The language definitions just need to come from dynamically-loadable shared
> libraries. They don't have to be Emacs dynamic modules, which bring additional
> unnecessary complications, e.g. build difficulty, load path pollution, or
> inability to load grammar binaries from other sources like distro's package
> repos. It's better to just load the shared libs directly without going through
> module machinery. Use the functions in `dynlib.h`.
> 

Dynamic modules comes with nice things, for example Emacs looks for them automatically in load-path; Emacs reports errors with it has problem loading one; I can package some additional information with the module; I could maybe distribute them through ordinary package.el facility, etc etc. If I load the shared library directly, I need to reinvent the wheels for loading, error reporting, searching in load-path, and others. On the other hand, dynamic modules don’t come with much complications. Yes, you need additional emacs-modules.h and tree-sitter-<lang>.c to build it, but that’s about it. And I was hoping to distribute pre-built modules anyway, so if all went well, ordinary users don’t need to compile the modules. WDYT?

P.S. what do you mean by “load path pollution”?
P.P.S. My impression is that other applications distribute language definitions by themselves, and it is not common for distort to package language definitions, is that correct?

Yuan