Re: Hosting tree-sitter pre-built language definitions on ELPA?

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

Yuan Fu [2022-10-01 21:47:11] wrote:
> I wonder if we can host pre-built language definitions for languages we
> provide tree-sitter support OOTB on ELPA, so users can easily download them?

[ Coming late to this discussion, sorry.  ]

We could consider it, but as Eli mentioned, it's not clear what we'll
need, so I think it's best to wait.  FWIW, there are similar questions
for Emacs modules distributed via (Non)GNU ELPA (such as the `libpq`
module), and currently we just don't do it.

Note also that the native ELisp compiler brings GCC as a dependency of
Emacs, so if that becomes the norm, we might prefer to just build the
language definition locally from its C version (which is not actually
its source), and maybe we'll want to host *those* i.e. the pre-digested
language definitions in their C form.

Hosting them on a gnu.org machine would make it easier to make their
installation (semi)automatic since we usually don't like to download
random code directly from third parties with which we have no
shared agreement.  But if the language definitions can be installed as
Debian packages, it might not be necessary at all.


        Stefan