not having generated files in source tree (discussion)

[FelipeLema]

I'm stating reasons / ways to work on tools to get the generated files out of the source tree so they don't need to be tracked. why?

• they hinder resolving diffs (even when resolved, it would need to be re-resolved in the future).
• they hinder concurrent development (harder to solve diffs when more people work on code at the same time).
• they hinder development by having a automatized process to be a developers responsibility.

tools / ways to handle and distribute generated files

• testing could be done using a Makefile (or any kind of dependency resolver) to do tree-sitter generate before tree-sitter test (no need to keep track of them).
• generated source files (eg src/parser.c) can still be offered as a download (for consumers of "a Tree-sitter language") by adding a CI release package that includes generated source files (CI runs tree-sitter generate and packs them).
• could re-use such CI to also offer compiled Tree-sitter language objects (.so, .dylib, .dll)

I can do the work myself if people are patient enough to wait. I would like to hear everyone else's opinion on this matter.

[FelipeLema]

well, I just found out that this is a discussion that should be scaled to the main tree-sitter project since all tree-sitter-{lang} repos share this structure

[FelipeLema]

relates to https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/issues/240