AST Explorer?

[max-sixty]

What's up?

It would be really nice to be able to explore our AST in something a bit more interactive / "zoom-able" than reading flat YAML. When working on prqlc fmt I would have found this v helpful. I briefly discussed this on the most recent dev call with @aljazerzen.

I checked out https://astexplorer.net/ — it's pretty nice — you can zoom in & out to different parts of the AST by unfolding & folding the tree; it uses highlights to show where the AST comes from in the code.

It doesn't support multiple stages — it would be even better to have columns with each stage and have the highlighting working across them. It also seems somewhat unmaintained now (https://github.com/fkling/astexplorer/issues/625), and I couldn't managed to get it to build on my local machine.

So:

• Is anyone familiar with any alternatives?
  • LLVM Compiler Explorer is another example, but very specific to LLVM
• Would anyone be up for either adding PRQL support to one of these?
  • We could possible try building our own if there are no alternatives; though it seems like a non-core part of the project, and would need to be in a web language, which we're less good at

[aljazerzen]

These are all very specific to the AST that they are exploring. And this should not be too hard to build ourself.

I'm planning on doing that.

[max-sixty]

These are all very specific to the AST that they are exploring.

Some parts! Though I had thought the concept of "put your cursor in an editor and highlight the corresponding items in the AST graphs" seemed quite general...

[snth]

Do all of the IRs have span fields with which one can link to the source code?

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Why does it have to be in a web language? Would a python tool be ok? You could potentially have it run in browser with pyodide or run serve a web page.

[max-sixty]

Do all of the IRs have span fields with which one can link to the source code?

Yes! At least LR, PR & PL do (though the latter aren't by default serialized, easy to change)

Why does it have to be in a web language? Would a python tool be ok? You could potentially have it run in browser with pyodide or run serve a web page.

Sure, whatever works; I had thought that this sort of thing would be best in a browser and browsers were easiest in JS, but no view beyond that...

[aljazerzen]

I've added "probes" that log data from the compilation to a "debug log" that can be serialized to either a json or html file. That file can be opened with a browser directly, so there is no need to have an HTTP server even.