Re: Tree-sitter introduction documentation

[Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>]

Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu> writes:

> On 12/16/2022 12:23 PM, Eli Zaretskii wrote:
>>> From: Manuel Giraud <manuel@ledu-giraud.fr>
>>> Ok but with tree-sitter, it feels like there is two level of
>>> third-party:
>>>          - the tree-sitter library
>>>          - the «language specicic part» library
>>>
>>> The former seems to be easily available in distro's packages (as is
>>> librsvg, libcairo, etc.) but the latter does not seem to be as
>>> accessible.  I hope it will change with time and adoption of tree-sitter
>>> otherwise tree-sitter usage (at least in emacs) will end up being
>>> «expert» matter.
>> I think it indeed will change very soon, as soon as the distros
>> realize that Emacs 29 needs that to be able to use the -ts- modes.
>
> I wonder how well known this is among distro Emacs maintainers.  I did a quick internet
> search and didn't find any indication that any distros have done it yet.  Can anyone point
> me to an example?
>
> Ken

From what I've been able to find out, some distributions have the tree
sitter libraries as packages, but none have the grammar definition libs
yet.

Given the lag for some distros in adding new packages, it will likely be
at least 12 month lag before distros will have packaged versions of
language definition libs. For distros with LTS releases, it could mean 2
or 3 years before users see them in their package repos.

Distributions with a rolling release model, like Arch, will likely see
the language definition libs as packages much sooner than the other
distros.