Investigate existing tree-sitter grammars

[alexr00]

Currently, we use textmate grammars for syntax highlighting. We get these grammars from other OSS projects, which let's us avoid becoming experts in every programming language that we support. Many of these OSS projects are no longer supported though, and we've had to take ownership of at least one of the grammars (css).

Tree-sitter appears to be popular right now for syntax highlight grammars, but before we consider adding support for tree-sitter grammars in VS Code, we should understand what grammars already have good tree-sitter support. In particular, the following textmate grammars have reached a dead-end and are particularly important to have support for in whatever syntax highlighting solution we support next:

Key:
✅ repo is very active
⚠️ limited repo activity
❌ no repo or no activity

• HTML ✅
• YAML ⚠️
• XML ✅, but unclear how much use the grammar gets
• Groovy ✅, but unclear how much use the grammar gets
• Ini ⚠️
• SCSS ❌
• Perl ✅

All other textmate languages

Summary:

10 will be more supported
5 will be less supported
5 will be equivalently unsupported

Language	Textmate maintained?	Tree-sitter maintained?
bat	❌	❌
clojure	❌	✅ https://github.com/sogaiu/tree-sitter-clojure
coffeescript	❌	❌
cpp	❌ license changed	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-cpp
csharp	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-c-sharp
css	⚠️ we maintain	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-css
dart	✅	✅ https://github.com/UserNobody14/tree-sitter-dart
diff	❌	✅ https://github.com/the-mikedavis/tree-sitter-diff
docker	❌	✅ https://github.com/camdencheek/tree-sitter-dockerfile
fsharp	✅	⚠️ https://github.com/Nsidorenco/tree-sitter-fsharp
git	✅	✅ https://github.com/gbprod/tree-sitter-gitcommit
go	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-go
handlebars	⚠️ unclear if maintained	❌
hlsl	⚠️ unmaintained, 0 issues	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-hlsl
java	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-java
javascript	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-javascript
json	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-json
julia	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-julia
latex	✅	✅ https://github.com/latex-lsp/tree-sitter-latex
less	✅	❌
log	✅	❌
lua	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-lua
make	⚠️	⚠️ https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-make
markdown	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-markdown
objective c	⚠️	⚠️ https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-objc
perl	❌	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter-perl/tree-sitter-perl
php	⚠️	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-php
powershell	❌	❌
pug	❌	✅ https://github.com/zealot128/tree-sitter-pug
python	❌	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-python
razor	✅	❌
ruby	❌	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-ruby
rust	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-rust
shellscript	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-bash
sql	✅	✅ https://github.com/derekstride/tree-sitter-sql
swift	✅	✅ https://github.com/alex-pinkus/tree-sitter-swift
typscript	✅	✅ https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-typescript
vb	❌	❌

[alexr00]

HTML ✅

Repo	https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-html
Activity	commits in 2024
Stars	110
Used by	Neovim and Zed

[alexr00]

YAML ⚠️

Repo	https://github.com/ikatyang/tree-sitter-yaml
Activity	last commit was 3 years ago
Stars	81
Used by	Neovim and emacs
Issues	18 open issues

Repo	https://github.com/zed-industries/tree-sitter-yaml, fork of https://github.com/ikatyang/tree-sitter-yaml
Activity	last commit was 9 mos ago
Stars	1
Used by	Zed
Issues	doesn't allow issues

Repo	https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-yaml , fork of https://github.com/ikatyang/tree-sitter-yaml
Activity	only 1 commit since fork
Stars	0
Used by	maybe no one
Issues	allows issues but there are none

[alexr00]

XML ✅

Repo	https://github.com/tree-sitter-grammars/tree-sitter-xml
Activity	very active in the last 12 months
Stars	14
Used by	Neovim
Issues	5 closed issues

[alexr00]

Groovy ✅

Repo	https://github.com/murtaza64/tree-sitter-groovy
Activity	very active in the last 12 months
Stars	7
Used by	Neovim
Issues	1 open, 2 closed issues

[alexr00]

Ini⚠️

Repo	https://github.com/justinmk/tree-sitter-ini
Activity	a little activity in the last 12 months
Stars	16
Used by	Neovim
Issues	3 open, 1 closed issues

[alexr00]

SCSS ❌

Repo	https://github.com/serenadeai/tree-sitter-scss
Activity	last commit was 2 years ago
Stars	22
Used by	Neovim
Issues	7 open, 6 closed issues

[NullVoxPopuli]

handlebars could probably be handled by https://github.com/ember-tooling/tree-sitter-glimmer

[KillyMXI]

Curiously, 2 of those that would be "less supported" with tree-sitter are fsharp and razor...