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+STARTER GUIDE ON WRITTING MAJOR MODE WITH TREE-SITTER -*- org -*-
+
+This document guides you on adding tree-sitter support to a major
+mode.
+
+TOC:
+
+- Building Emacs with tree-sitter
+- Install language definitions
+- Setup
+- Font-lock
+- Indent
+- Imenu
+- Navigation
+- Which-func
+- More features?
+- Common tasks (code snippets)
+- Manual
+
+* Building Emacs with tree-sitter
+
+You can either install tree-sitter by your package manager, or from
+source:
+
+ git clone https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter.git
+ cd tree-sitter
+ make
+ make install
+
+Then pull the tree-sitter branch (or the master branch, if it has
+merged) and rebuild Emacs.
+
+* Install language definitions
+
+Tree-sitter by itself doesn’t know how to parse any particular
+language. We need to install language definitions (or “grammars”) for
+a language to be able to parse it. There are a couple of ways to get
+them.
+
+You can use this script that I put together here:
+
+ https://github.com/casouri/tree-sitter-module
+
+You can also find them under this directory in /build-modules.
+
+This script automatically pulls and builds language definitions for C,
+C++, Rust, JSON, Go, HTML, Javascript, CSS, Python, Typescript,
+and C#. Better yet, I pre-built these language definitions for
+GNU/Linux and macOS, they can be downloaded here:
+
+ https://github.com/casouri/tree-sitter-module/releases/tag/v2.1
+
+To build them yourself, run
+
+ git clone git@github.com:casouri/tree-sitter-module.git
+ cd tree-sitter-module
+ ./batch.sh
+
+and language definitions will be in the /dist directory. You can
+either copy them to standard dynamic library locations of your system,
+eg, /usr/local/lib, or leave them in /dist and later tell Emacs where
+to find language definitions by setting ‘treesit-extra-load-path’.
+
+Language definition sources can be found on GitHub under
+tree-sitter/xxx, like tree-sitter/tree-sitter-python. The tree-sitter
+organization has all the "official" language definitions:
+
+ https://github.com/tree-sitter
+
+* Setting up for adding major mode features
+
+Start Emacs, and load tree-sitter with
+
+ (require 'treesit)
+
+Now check if Emacs is built with tree-sitter library
+
+ (treesit-available-p)
+
+For your major mode, first create a tree-sitter switch:
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(defcustom python-use-tree-sitter nil
+ "If non-nil, `python-mode' tries to use tree-sitter.
+Currently `python-mode' can utilize tree-sitter for font-locking,
+imenu, and movement functions."
+ :type 'boolean)
+#+end_src
+
+Then in other places, we decide on whether to enable tree-sitter by
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(and python-use-tree-sitter
+ (treesit-can-enable-p))
+#+end_src
+
+* Font-lock
+
+Tree-sitter works like this: You provide a query made of patterns and
+capture names, tree-sitter finds the nodes that match these patterns,
+tag the corresponding capture names onto the nodes and return them to
+you. The query function returns a list of (capture-name . node). For
+font-lock, we use face names as capture names. And the captured node
+will be fontified in their capture name. The capture name could also
+be a function, in which case (START END NODE) is passed to the
+function for font-lock. START and END is the start and end the
+captured NODE.
+
+** Query syntax
+
+There are two types of nodes, named, like (identifier),
+(function_definition), and anonymous, like "return", "def", "(",
+"}". Parent-child relationship is expressed as
+
+ (parent (child) (child) (child (grand_child)))
+
+Eg, an argument list (1, "3", 1) could be:
+
+ (argument_list "(" (number) (string) (number) ")")
+
+Children could have field names in its parent:
+
+ (function_definition name: (identifier) type: (identifier))
+
+Match any of the list:
+
+ ["true" "false" "none"]
+
+Capture names can come after any node in the pattern:
+
+ (parent (child) @child) @parent
+
+The query above captures both parent and child.
+
+ ["return" "continue" "break"] @keyword
+
+The query above captures all the keywords with capture name
+"keyword".
+
+These are the common syntax, see all of them in the manual
+("Parsing Program Source" section).
+
+** Query references
+
+But how do one come up with the queries? Take python for an
+example, open any python source file, evaluate
+
+ (treesit-parser-create 'python)
+
+so there is a parser available, then enable ‘treesit-inspect-mode’.
+Now you should see information of the node under point in
+mode-line. Move around and you should be able to get a good
+picture. Besides this, you can consult the grammar of the language
+definition. For example, Python’s grammar file is at
+
+ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-python/blob/master/grammar.js
+
+Neovim also has a bunch of queries to reference:
+
+ https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter/tree/master/queries
+
+The manual explains how to read grammar files in the bottom of section
+"Tree-sitter Language Definitions".
+
+** Debugging queires
+
+If your query has problems, it usually cannot compile. In that case
+use ‘treesit-query-validate’ to debug the query. It will pop a buffer
+containing the query (in text format) and mark the offending part in
+red.
+
+** Code
+
+To enable tree-sitter font-lock, set ‘treesit-font-lock-settings’
+buffer-locally and call ‘treesit-font-lock-enable’. For example, see
+‘python--treesit-settings’ in python.el. Below I paste a snippet of
+it.
+
+Note that like the current font-lock, if the to-be-fontified region
+already has a face (ie, an earlier match fontified part/all of the
+region), the new face is discarded rather than applied. If you want
+later matches always override earlier matches, use the :override
+keyword.
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(defvar python--treesit-settings
+ (treesit-font-lock-rules
+ :language 'python
+ :override t
+ `(;; Queries for def and class.
+ (function_definition
+ name: (identifier) @font-lock-function-name-face)
+
+ (class_definition
+ name: (identifier) @font-lock-type-face)
+
+ ;; Comment and string.
+ (comment) @font-lock-comment-face
+
+ ...)))
+#+end_src
+
+Then in ‘python-mode’, enable tree-sitter font-lock:
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(treesit-parser-create 'python)
+;; This turns off the syntax-based font-lock for comments and
+;; strings. So it doesn’t override tree-sitter’s fontification.
+(setq-local font-lock-keywords-only t)
+(setq-local treesit-font-lock-settings
+ python--treesit-settings)
+(treesit-font-lock-enable)
+#+end_src
+
+Concretely, something like this:
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(define-derived-mode python-mode prog-mode "Python"
+ ...
+
+ (treesit-parser-create 'python)
+
+ (if (and python-use-tree-sitter
+ (treesit-can-enable-p))
+ ;; Tree-sitter.
+ (progn
+ (setq-local font-lock-keywords-only t)
+ (setq-local treesit-font-lock-settings
+ python--treesit-settings)
+ (treesit-font-lock-enable))
+ ;; No tree-sitter
+ (setq-local font-lock-defaults ...))
+
+ ...)
+#+end_src
+
+You’ll notice that tree-sitter’s font-lock doesn’t respect
+‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’, major modes are free to set
+‘treesit-font-lock-settings’ based on the value of
+‘font-lock-maximum-decoration’, or provide more fine-grained control
+through other mode-specific means.
+
+* Indent
+
+Indent works like this: We have a bunch of rules that look like this:
+
+ (MATCHER ANCHOR OFFSET)
+
+At the beginning point is at the BOL of a line, we want to know which
+column to indent this line to. Let NODE be the node at point, we pass
+this node to the MATCHER of each rule, one of them will match the node
+("this node is a closing bracket!"). Then we pass the node to the
+ANCHOR, which returns a point, eg, the BOL of the previous line. We
+find the column number of that point (eg, 4), add OFFSET to it (eg,
+0), and that is the column we want to indent the current line to (4 +
+0 = 4).
+
+For MATHCER we have
+
+ (parent-is TYPE)
+ (node-is TYPE)
+ (query QUERY) => matches if querying PARENT with QUERY
+ captures NODE.
+
+ (match NODE-TYPE PARENT-TYPE NODE-FIELD
+ NODE-INDEX-MIN NODE-INDEX-MAX)
+
+ => checks everything. If an argument is nil, don’t match that. Eg,
+ (match nil nil TYPE) is the same as (parent-is TYPE)
+
+For ANCHOR we have
+
+ first-sibling => start of the first sibling
+ parent => start of parent
+ parent-bol => BOL of the line parent is on.
+ prev-sibling
+ no-indent => don’t indent
+ prev-line => same indent as previous line
+
+There is also a manual section for indent: "Parser-based Indentation".
+
+When writing indent rules, you can use ‘treesit-check-indent’ to
+check if your indentation is correct. To debug what went wrong, set
+‘treesit--indent-verboase’ to non-nil. Then when you indent, Emacs
+tells you which rule is applied in the echo area.
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(defvar typescript-mode-indent-rules
+ (let ((offset typescript-indent-offset))
+ `((typescript
+ ;; This rule matches if node at point is "}", ANCHOR is the
+ ;; parent node’s BOL, and offset is 0.
+ ((node-is "}") parent-bol 0)
+ ((node-is ")") parent-bol 0)
+ ((node-is "]") parent-bol 0)
+ ((node-is ">") parent-bol 0)
+ ((node-is ".") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "ternary_expression") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "named_imports") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "statement_block") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "type_arguments") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "variable_declarator") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "arguments") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "array") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "formal_parameters") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "template_substitution") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "object_pattern") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "object") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "object_type") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "enum_body") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "arrow_function") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ((parent-is "parenthesized_expression") parent-bol ,offset)
+ ...))))
+#+end_src
+
+Then you set ‘treesit-simple-indent-rules’ to your rules, and set
+‘indent-line-function’:
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(setq-local treesit-simple-indent-rules typescript-mode-indent-rules)
+(setq-local indent-line-function #'treesit-indent)
+#+end_src
+
+* Imenu
+
+Not much to say except for utilizing ‘treesit-induce-sparse-tree’.
+See ‘python--imenu-treesit-create-index-1’ in python.el for an
+example.
+
+Once you have the index builder, set ‘imenu-create-index-function’.
+
+* Navigation
+
+Mainly ‘beginning-of-defun-function’ and ‘end-of-defun-function’.
+You can find the end of a defun with something like
+
+(treesit-search-forward-goto "function_definition" 'end)
+
+where "function_definition" matches the node type of a function
+definition node, and ’end means we want to go to the end of that
+node.
+
+Something like this should suffice:
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(defun xxx-beginning-of-defun (&optional arg)
+ (if (> arg 0)
+ ;; Go backward.
+ (while (and (> arg 0)
+ (treesit-search-forward-goto
+ "function_definition" 'start nil t))
+ (setq arg (1- arg)))
+ ;; Go forward.
+ (while (and (< arg 0)
+ (treesit-search-forward-goto
+ "function_definition" 'start))
+ (setq arg (1+ arg)))))
+
+(setq-local beginning-of-defun-function #'xxx-beginning-of-defun)
+#+end_src
+
+And the same for end-of-defun.
+
+* Which-func
+
+You can find the current function by going up the tree and looking for
+the function_definition node. See ‘python-info-treesit-current-defun’
+in python.el for an example. Since Python allows nested function
+definitions, that function keeps going until it reaches the root node,
+and records all the function names along the way.
+
+#+begin_src elisp
+(defun python-info-treesit-current-defun (&optional include-type)
+ "Identical to `python-info-current-defun' but use tree-sitter.
+For INCLUDE-TYPE see `python-info-current-defun'."
+ (let ((node (treesit-node-at (point)))
+ (name-list ())
+ (type nil))
+ (cl-loop while node
+ if (pcase (treesit-node-type node)
+ ("function_definition"
+ (setq type 'def))
+ ("class_definition"
+ (setq type 'class))
+ (_ nil))
+ do (push (treesit-node-text
+ (treesit-node-child-by-field-name node "name")
+ t)
+ name-list)
+ do (setq node (treesit-node-parent node))
+ finally return (concat (if include-type
+ (format "%s " type)
+ "")
+ (string-join name-list ".")))))
+#+end_src
+
+* More features?
+
+Obviously this list is just a starting point, if there are features in
+the major mode that would benefit a parse tree, adding tree-sitter
+support for that would be great. But in the minimal case, just adding
+font-lock is awesome.
+
+* Common tasks
+
+How to...
+
+** Get the buffer text corresponding to a node?
+
+(treesit-node-text node)
+
+BTW ‘treesit-node-string’ does different things.
+
+** Scan the whole tree for stuff?
+
+(treesit-search-subtree)
+(treesit-search-forward)
+(treesit-induce-sparse-tree)
+
+** Move to next node that...?
+
+(treesit-search-forward-goto)
+
+** Get the root node?
+
+(treesit-buffer-root-node)
+
+** Get the node at point?
+
+(treesit-node-at (point))
+
+* Manual
+
+I suggest you read the manual section for tree-sitter in Info. The
+section is Parsing Program Source. Typing
+
+ C-h i d m elisp RET g Parsing Program Source RET
+
+will bring you to that section. You can also read the HTML version
+under /html-manual in this directory. I find the HTML version easier
+to read. You don’t need to read through every sentence, just read the
+text paragraphs and glance over function names.