PIOASM syntax highlighting not working when using tree-sitter-pioasm.

[crabdancing]

I'm trying to get syntax highlighting on .pio files for hardware RP2040 Programmable Input-Output state machines. I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, if there's something wrong with tree-sitter-pioasm, or if there's something wrong with my config.

Here's what I tried in my languages.toml:

[[language]]
name = "pioasm"
scope = "source.pioasm"
file-types = ["pio", "pioasm"]
indent = { tab-width = 4, unit = " " }
comment-tokens = ";"

[[grammar]]
name = "pioasm"
source = { git = "https://github.com/leo60228/tree-sitter-pioasm", rev = "afece58efdb30440bddd151ef1347fa8d6f744a9" }

Then I built Helix from source. I saw tree-sitter-pioasm get pulled, and later found its .so in my runtime dir -- so it's definitely building correctly.

Here's a basic file that should have syntax highlighting when named e.g. sm0.pio:

.program main
loop:
    in pins 1
    mov osr, isr
    push
    jmp loop

My Helix version, if that's relevant:

helix 25.01.1 (fe03376a)

Relevant links:

https://github.com/leo60228/tree-sitter-pioasm
leo60228/tree-sitter-pioasm#2

[CalebLarsen]

Will you try and run hx -g fetch; hx -g build?

After that, will you run hx --health and see if your language shows up?

[crabdancing]

I tried hx -g build, but it seems to fail p. badly on my NixOS system. The grammars.nix tooling does seem to be properly building everything declaratively, though. As for hx --health:

🐟 ❯ hx --health | rg pioasm                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                              2025-06-09 (Jun, Mon) 13:00:27
pioasm                                      None                                        None                                        None                                        ✘                                           ✘                                           ✘

[CalebLarsen]

Ok, it seems that you have the grammar around just fine. What it looks like is missing is a highlights.scm file. In $HELIX_RUNTIME/queries, make a directory called pioasm and in that directory, add a file called highlights.scm.

Writing highlight queries can be a bit tricky at first, but it's mostly just labeling the different parts with the appropriate names.
Here is tree-sitter's guide to writing these highlight queries.
Here is Helix's list of highlight names.
Lastly, here is the highlight queries we currently use for nasm which can be some inspiration for you.

Hopefully that gives you a direction to go in to get highlighting. Let me know if there's anything you need!

[CalebLarsen]

Also of note with helping write queries are the helix commands :tree-sitter-scopes and :tree-sitter-subtree. I use them to see exactly how things are being parsed and to double check my understanding. :tree-sitter-highlight-name is also nice to tell you how something is being highlighted to make sure that it matches your expectations.

[crabdancing]

oh, awesome! Thank you so much! :D