Fallback to system libraries for tree-sitter grammars

[blinxen]

Would the maintainers be open for a PR enabling helix to fallback to system libraries when loading tree-sitter grammars? At the moment helix loads the grammars from a hardcoded path. This approach forces package maintainers to either bundle all grammars into a single helix package or to have a grammerless package, which is terrible for new users that don't know how to compile the grammars themselves.

I am unsure how cross-platform this approach is since I only use Linux. Also, when talking about "system libraries" I mean something like /usr/lib.

[the-mikedavis]

The parsers can't be separated from the queries: their versions depend on one another. For example a newer version of a parser might rename or remove a node and then older queries matching on that node will then fail to compile.

Eventually we want to replace the current grammar loading system with a new one using some of the tools in https://github.com/helix-editor/tree-house. That will improve the UX of starting a fresh Helix instance with no grammars installed: you should be prompted asking if you want to download and compile the parsers and queries and they would likely move from $HELIX_RUNTIME/grammars to somewhere under XDG state dir.

[blinxen]

Thanks for the fast reply!

you should be prompted asking if you want to download and compile the parsers and queries and they would likely move from $HELIX_RUNTIME/grammars to somewhere under XDG state dir.

That is indeed a very good idea! Not sure if maintaining your own tree-sitter bindings is worth it though.