Re: Tree-sitter introduction documentation

[Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>]

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  > (setq treesit-language-source-alist
  >       '((python "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-python.git")
  >         (typescript "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-typescript.git"
  >                     "typescript/src" "typescript")))

A GNU package should not load other programs straight off of someone
else's repository.  That is vulnerable to surprise changes, in the
code and in its license.  We can hardly count on Github to make sure
these run without any nonfree software.

There are three proper ways for Emacs to handle it needs.

* To assume that they are already installed.  Normally they would be
part of some other package in your system distro.  This is what we do
with many standard tools and libraries.

With this method, we outsource the vetting of those programs to the
GNU/Linux distro.  If you use a free distro, you can count it to make
free versions of those programs available to install.

We could in principle handle tree-sitter grammars this way,
but only if and when GNU/Linux distros generally package them.
Is that the case today?

* To include their source code in Emacs the Emacs release, and build
them along with the rest of Emacs.

* To tell the user, "Installing these external programs is your
responsibility."  That is the least helpful method, but it's
acceptable.

How does the current tree-sitter code obtain grammars to run?  Does it
download those straight from Github too?  That's not an acceptable
solution -- we should replace it with one of the three above.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman (https://stallman.org)
Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project (https://gnu.org)
Founder, Free Software Foundation (https://fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (https://internethalloffame.org)