[Support] Rebuilding language grammar has no effect??

[7ombie]

I'm trying to update the Swift grammar, and got it to build etc, but when I restart Helix, it uses the old grammar.

First, I ran hx --grammar fetch and hx --grammar build, without creating a languages.toml file.

Then, I created a languages.toml file (in ~/.config/helix), and added this to it:

[[language]]
name = "swift"
scope = "source.swift"
file-types = ["swift"]
injection-regex = "swift"
language-id = "swift"

[[grammar]]
name = "swift"
source.path = "/Users/carl/.config/helix/runtime/grammars/sources/swift"

Then, I edited ~/.config/helix/runtime/grammars/sources/swift/queries/highlights.scm, and made a couple of changes.

I deleted ~/.config/helix/runtime/grammars/swift.so, and ran hx --grammar build. It (re)built the Swift grammar (and only the Swift grammar) as expected. However, when I relaunched Helix, there was no difference??

I'd be grateful for any advice. Thanks.

[kirawi]

We don't use the source query files. The ones we use are under runtime/queries. You also don't rebuild the grammars when you update the queries because the queries are dynamically loaded. The only time you rebuild grammars are when their actual source code is changed (grammar.js and parser.c)

[7ombie]

Ahh. Thank you. Much appreciated.

So ~/.config/helix/runtime/queries/swift is a copy of ~/.config/helix/runtime/grammars/sources/swift/queries/ for the user's versions of the files?

[7ombie]

But I'm using the one that Helix fetched and built. I'm just making some changes to that. Moving it to ~/.config/helix/runtime/queries/swift worked at least.

[kirawi]

Like I said, the highlighting is going to be wrong. This is the list of what copying the query broke:

• method signatures
• parameters
• properties
• import
• function calls
• control flow statements (e.g. loops)
• conditional statements
• primitives (numbers, bool)

The ones in source are owned by the grammar repository, not us.

[7ombie]

I see. That makes no sense (to me at least). Why would you install hundreds of files that don't work? So, I can't easily fix the Swift grammar at all?? It's just not that simple?

[kirawi]

To build the grammars, we need to clone their respective repositories first (which are all stored in the source directory). These are C libraries we are building so there's no way around it. What you are trying to do is adjust the query not the grammar (they are different). If you used a package manager to install Helix, then it put that runtime folder with our queries somewhere. https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/blob/master/runtime/queries/swift/highlights.scm is where it is defined. You can copy that to your runtime folder and make those adjustments you wanted

[7ombie]

Ahhh. I see. I wasn't getting the point of the sources. Thank you for your patience. I get it now. You're awesome.