Re: Tree-sitter introduction documentation

[Stefan Monnier]

Eli Zaretskii [2022-12-27 20:08:32] wrote:
> Good luck with that!  It requires to install Node.js and other stiff,
> which I personally won't touch with a 3-mile pole, and I'm unsure (but
> never bothered to find out) whether free replacements even exist.

That's the part of Tree-sitter which makes me a bit uneasy.

In Emacs, we usually don't just stick to the letter of the Free Software
principles (e.g. release our code under the GPL) but we try to go the
extra miles so that our users can actually exercise their rights as
easily as possible (e.g. with things like `C-h k` that lets them jump
straight to the source, ...).

But with Tree-sitter, our users are currently a bit stuck.  The grammars
are Free, yes, but it takes a fair bit of extra work (and potentially
even some code with unclear licensing along the way) if you want to
modify their source code and use the result :-(

Maybe building our own `.c` grammars from source would be a way for us
to face up to this reality :-(


        Stefan