Re: Tree-sitter introduction documentation

[Lynn Winebarger <owinebar@gmail.com>]

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On Tue, Dec 27, 2022, 9:53 PM Yuan Fu <casouri@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On Dec 27, 2022, at 1:13 PM, Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>
> wrote:
> >
> >> It should be possible to port this, but I question if it is worth
> >> the effort.
> >
> > I think it's worth the effort in order to help empower our users to make
> > changes to their grammars.  Otherwise we're back to grammars whose
> > source is legally-speaking Free but that most of ours users wouldn't
> > know how to change.
>
> The “DSL” used to describe language grammar is reasonably straightforward,
> and our manual explains it to some degree (see the end of section 37.1
> Tree-sitter Language Definitions). Though one probably need some additional
> knowledge on writing parsers to work on the grammar.
>

The problem is that the "cli" written in Rust is the parser generator.  I
looked into trying tree-sitter last summer, but gave up when I discovered
the Rust tool chain isn't available for cygwin.
A cursory inspection doesn't show me why the author goes to the length of
using JavaScript and nodejs, since all the real work appears to be in
Rust.
I suspect that Stefan and Eli would prefer a solution that decoupled the
use of libtreesitter from the tool that generates the shared library with
the parser tables (and whatever else is required) that the tree sitter
library loads.

Generating GLR automata is well-understood, but tree-sitter appears to have
some additional functionality in its parser generation.  How much of that
is required for libtreesitter to function is another question that would
need to be understood.

This is where the culture of free software, where the process of building
software is expected to be inclusive of the user-developer's local system,
and corporate open-source, which requires repeatable processes and
controlled build environments, are at logger heads.  Chromium (and its
component projects) is not encumbered by a software license, but it's build
process is a nightmare for any individual that wants to validate or
control, at least in principle, all software running on their system.  I'm
only using Chromium as an example with which I'm somewhat familiar.  It
sounds like Rust incorporates some bias towards "continuous integration"
builds as well.

Lynn

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