# Contributing

## AI Policy

Large language models (LLMs) and coding agents (Copilot, Claude, Gemini etc.)
are very good at quickly producing reasonable-looking code. However, they are
very bad at understanding the (especially historical) context of the project.
This means that it has become trivial to create PRs that seem useful at first
glance but require a significant effort to bring them up to the standard
required by the project, putting an undue burden on the maintainers. To prevent
this, contributions to tree-sitter are **required** to follow these rules:

1. **No direct coding agent interaction with the repository.**

   This includes both automatically opened PRs or issues and automated code
   review, whether requested intentionally or not. While the use of such tools
   can be helpful, a human (you) must be in the driver's seat at all times.

   If you want an LLM-assisted review of your contribution, open a PR against
   the default branch of your own fork *first* and iterate there. Once you are
   satisfied, you can open a new, clean PR from the same branch to the
   tree-sitter repo.

2. **No copy-pasted LLM output in issues, PR descriptions or comments.**

   LLMs are notoriously incapable of being concise, forcing maintainers to sift
   through long text to separate the pearls from the slop. Being able to give a
   concise description of the problem and/or solution also demonstrates that
   you can take responsibility for the changes.

   We want to talk with you, not a glorified Markov chain. If you are not
   comfortable with writing in English, you can use dedicated translation tools
   like Google Translate or DeepL that will translate comments in your native
   language to English as closely as possible (without padding with irrelevant
   details and changing the tone). Also, your English need not be perfect: Most
   contributors are not native speakers, and people will make an effort to
   understand you as long as you make a similar effort to communicate clearly.
   Knowing your language level is also helpful to us when commenting on your
   issue or PR.

3. **All AI use must be disclosed.**

   At the very least, the fact that LLM or a coding agent was used needs to be
   disclosed, with a short description of how the tool was used and what you
   yourself did.

   The burden is on you to convince us that you have sufficient understanding
   of the problem and the proposed solution to merit the significant maintainer
   effort for code review and improvements. While these rules apply to everyone
   equally, the burden of proof is of course higher for new contributors than
   for maintainers and long-time trusted contributors.

It is up to the maintainers' discretion whether an issue or PR violates these
rules, in which case it will be closed without discussion. In general, opening
a new issue or PR that respects the rules is welcomed, but we reserve the right
to block repeat offenders or fully autonomous agents.

## Code of Conduct

Contributors to Tree-sitter should abide by the [Contributor Covenant][covenant].

## Developing Tree-sitter

### Prerequisites

To make changes to Tree-sitter, you should have:

1. A C compiler, for compiling the core library and the generated parsers.
2. A [Rust toolchain][rust], for compiling the Rust bindings, the highlighting library, and the CLI.
3. Node.js and NPM, for generating parsers from `grammar.js` files.
4. Either [Emscripten][emscripten], [Docker][docker], or [podman][podman] for
compiling the library to Wasm.

### Building

Clone the repository:

```sh
git clone https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter
cd tree-sitter
```

Optionally, build the Wasm library. If you skip this step, then the `tree-sitter playground` command will require an internet
connection. If you have Emscripten installed, this will use your `emcc` compiler. Otherwise, it will use Docker or Podman:

```sh
cd lib/binding_web
npm install # or your JS package manager of choice
npm run build
```

Build the Rust libraries and the CLI:

```sh
cargo build --release
```

This will create the `tree-sitter` CLI executable in the `target/release` folder.

If you want to automatically install the `tree-sitter` CLI in your system, you can run:

```sh
cargo install --path crates/cli
```

If you're going to be in a fast iteration cycle and would like the CLI to build faster, you can use the `release-dev` profile:

```sh
cargo build --profile release-dev
# or
cargo install --path crates/cli --profile release-dev
```

### Testing

Before you can run the tests, you need to fetch some upstream grammars that are used for testing:

```sh
cargo xtask fetch-fixtures
```

To test any changes you've made to the CLI, you can regenerate these parsers using your current CLI code:

```sh
cargo xtask generate-fixtures
```

Then you can run the tests:

```sh
cargo xtask test
```

Similarly, to test the Wasm binding, you need to compile these parsers to Wasm:

```sh
cargo xtask generate-fixtures --wasm
cargo xtask test-wasm
```

#### Wasm Stdlib

The tree-sitter Wasm stdlib can be built via xtask:

```sh
cargo xtask build-wasm-stdlib
```

This command looks for the [Wasi SDK][wasi_sdk] indicated by the `TREE_SITTER_WASI_SDK_PATH`
environment variable. If you don't have the binary, it can be downloaded from wasi-sdk's [releases][wasi-sdk-releases]
page. Similarly, this command also looks for [ the `wasm-opt` tool from binaryen][binaryen] indicated by the `TREE_SITTER_BINARYEN_PATH`
environment variable. `wasm-opt` and the rest of the binaryen tool suite can be downloaded from the project's [releases][binaryen-releases]
page. Note that any changes to `crates/language/wasm/**` requires rebuilding the tree-sitter Wasm stdlib via `cargo xtask build-wasm-stdlib`.

### Debugging

The test script has a number of useful flags. You can list them all by running `cargo xtask test -h`.
Here are some of the main flags:

If you want to run a specific unit test, pass its name (or part of its name) as an argument:

```sh
cargo xtask test test_does_something
```

You can run the tests under the debugger (either `lldb` or `gdb`) using the `-g` flag:

```sh
cargo xtask test -g test_does_something
```

Part of the Tree-sitter test suite involves parsing the _corpus_ tests for several languages and performing randomized edits
to each example in the corpus. If you just want to run the tests for a particular _language_, you can pass the `-l` flag.
Additionally, if you want to run a particular _example_ from the corpus, you can pass the `-e` flag:

```sh
cargo xtask test -l javascript -e Arrays
```

If you are using `lldb` to debug the C library, tree-sitter provides custom pretty printers for several of its types.
You can enable these helpers by importing them:

```sh
(lldb) command script import /path/to/tree-sitter/lib/lldb_pretty_printers/tree_sitter_types.py
```

#### Sanitizers

Tests can be run with AddressSanitizer or UndefinedBehaviorSanitizer to track down memory or UB issues in the C library
or in grammar parsers. The standard recipe is

```sh
CFLAGS=-fsanitize=address \
RUSTFLAGS="-lasan --cfg sanitizing" \
ASAN_OPTIONS=verify_asan_link_order=0 \
cargo test
```

Swap `address` -> `undefined` (and `-lasan` -> `-lubsan`) for UBSAN, or combine them with `-fsanitize=undefined,address`
and both `-l` flags.

If the loader detects `-fsanitize=` in the compile flags, `-Wl,--no-undefined` is dropped from the grammar link step. This
lets the grammar's sanitizer runtime symbols be resolved at runtime rather than be rejected at link time.

If you flip between sanitizer and non-sanitizer runs you may pick up cached parser builds from the previous mode in `target/scratch/`.
Clear that directory to resolve any inconsistencies.

## Published Packages

The main [`tree-sitter/tree-sitter`][ts repo] repository contains the source code for
several packages that are published to package registries for different languages:

* Rust crates on [crates.io][crates]:
  * [`tree-sitter`][lib crate] — A Rust binding to the core library
  * [`tree-sitter-config`][config crate] — User configuration of the command-line tool
  * [`tree-sitter-cli`][cli crate] — The command-line tool
  * [`tree-sitter-generate`][generate crate] — The parser-generation library
  * [`tree-sitter-highlight`][highlight crate] — The syntax-highlighting library
  * [`tree-sitter-language`][language crate] — A language type for grammars to interact with the core library
  * [`tree-sitter-loader`][loader crate] — The parser building and loading library
  * [`tree-sitter-tags`][tags crate] — The syntax-tagging library

* JavaScript modules on [npmjs.com][npmjs]:
  * [`web-tree-sitter`][web-ts] — A Wasm-based JavaScript binding to the core library
  * [`tree-sitter-cli`][cli package] — The command-line tool

There are also several other dependent repositories that contain other published packages:

* [`tree-sitter/node-tree-sitter`][node ts] — Node.js bindings to the core library,
published as [`tree-sitter`][node package] on npmjs.com
* [`tree-sitter/py-tree-sitter`][py ts] — Python bindings to the core library,
published as [`tree-sitter`][py package] on [PyPI.org][pypi].
* [`tree-sitter/go-tree-sitter`][go ts] — Go bindings to the core library,
published as [`tree_sitter`][go package] on [pkg.go.dev][go.dev].

## Release workflow

Treesitter follows [semver](https://semver.org) (pre-1.0.0) with a dual development strategy:
* All development happens on the **`master` branch**, i.e., any new PR (bugfix or feature) must target `master`.
* Applicable bugfixes and minor improvements are backported to the latest **`release-0.x` branch**, where `x` is the latest minor version. This can be automated by adding the `ci:backport release-0.x` label to the PR. _No new features or breaking changes should be backported_; this is important to make sure that patch releases are drop-in replacements that are always safe to update to (i.e., downstream users should never have to check patch versions for input or output changes)!

**Important:** All crates within the project (see above) are versioned in lockstep with the exception of [`tree-sitter-language`][language crate], which is versioned independently and only bumped when necessary.

### Minor releases

Minor releases (`0.x.0`) are made from the **`master` branch** following these steps:
1. Create a "release `v0.x.0`" PR on `master` and apply the `ci:check release` label to check for possible issues, in particular whether the language crate needs to be bumped.
2. If the check release workflow indicates, bump the **patch** version of the language crate. Important: This must be higher than the last published version on `crates.io`, which may be from a patch release! (I.e., the version may need to be bumped by two or more.)
3. Once the PR is merged, tag the commit accordingly: `tag v0.x.0` and push via `git push --tags` (maintainers only). This will trigger the release and publish workflows.
4. Edit the Github release to include release notes (auto-generated, if nothing else).
5. Create a new `release-0.x` branch and push to Github.
6. Bump all version numbers (except for the language crate) to `0.{x+1}.0`, e.g., via `cargo xtask bump-version 0.{x+1}.0` and committing as "release: start working on `0.{x+1}.0`". (This is important to be able to distinguish prerelease nightly builds from the last release by the `--version` output.) Note: this requires tooling for all involved languages, including `npm` and `zig`. Double-check that all versions are bumped correctly by grepping for the old version!

On average, minor releases should happen 1-3 times a year.

### Patch releases

Patch releases (`0.x.y`) are made from the **`release-0.x` branch** following these steps:
1. Bump all version numbers (except for the language crate) to `0.x.y` as described above.
2. Create a "release `v0.x.y`" PR on `release-0.x` and apply the `ci:check release` label.
3. If the check release workflow indicates, bump the patch version of the language crate.
4. Once the PR is merged, tag the commit accordingly: `tag v0.x.y` and push via `git push --tags` (maintainers only). This will trigger the release and publish workflows.
5. Edit the Github release to include release notes (auto-generated, if nothing else).

On average, minor releases should happen every six weeks.

## Developing Documentation

Our current static site generator for documentation is [`mdBook`][mdBook], with a little bit of custom JavaScript to handle
the playground page. Most of the documentation is written in Markdown, including this file! You can find these files
at [`docs/src`][docs src]. If you'd like to submit a PR to improve the documentation, navigate to the page you'd like to
edit and hit the edit icon at the top right of the page.

### Prerequisites for Local Development

```admonish note
We're assuming you have `cargo` installed, the Rust package manager.
```

To run and iterate on the docs locally, the
[`mdbook`][mdbook cli] CLI tool is required, which can be installed with

```sh
cargo install mdbook
```

You might have noticed we have some fancy admonitions sprinkled throughout the documentation, like the note above.
These are created using [`mdbook-admonish`][admonish], a [preprocessor][preprocessor] for `mdBook`. As such, this is also
a requirement for developing the documentation locally. To install it, run:

```sh
cargo install mdbook-admonish
```

Once you've installed it, you can begin using admonitions in your markdown files. See the [reference][admonish reference]
for more information.

### Spinning it up

Now that you've installed the prerequisites, you can run the following command to start a local server:

```sh
cd docs
mdbook serve --open
```

`mdbook` has a live-reload feature, so any changes you make to the markdown files will be reflected in the browser after
a short delay. Once you've made a change that you're happy with, you can submit a PR with your changes.

### Improving the Playground

The playground page is a little more complicated, but if you know some basic JavaScript and CSS you should be able to make
changes. The playground code can be found in [`docs/src/assets/js/playground.js`][playground], and its corresponding css
at [`docs/src/assets/css/playground.css`][playground css]. The editor of choice we use for the playground is [CodeMirror][codemirror],
and the tree-sitter module is fetched from [here][js url]. This, along with the Wasm module and Wasm parsers, live in the
[.github.io repo][gh.io repo].

[admonish]: https://github.com/tommilligan/mdbook-admonish
[admonish reference]: https://tommilligan.github.io/mdbook-admonish/reference.html
[binaryen]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen
[binaryen-releases]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/binaryen/releases
[config crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-config
[cli crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-cli
[cli package]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/tree-sitter-cli
[codemirror]: https://codemirror.net
[covenant]: https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/1/4/code-of-conduct
[crates]: https://crates.io
[docker]: https://www.docker.com
[docs src]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/tree/master/docs/src
[emscripten]: https://emscripten.org
[generate crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-generate
[gh.io repo]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter.github.io
[go.dev]: https://pkg.go.dev
[go package]: https://pkg.go.dev/github.com/tree-sitter/go-tree-sitter
[go ts]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/go-tree-sitter
[highlight crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-highlight
[js url]: https://tree-sitter.github.io/web-tree-sitter.js
[language crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-language
[lib crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter
[loader crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-loader
[mdBook]: https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook
[mdbook cli]: https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/guide/installation.html
[node package]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/tree-sitter
[node ts]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/node-tree-sitter
[npmjs]: https://npmjs.com
[playground]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/blob/master/docs/src/assets/js/playground.js
[playground css]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter/blob/master/docs/src/assets/css/playground.css
[podman]: https://podman.io
[preprocessor]: https://rust-lang.github.io/mdBook/for_developers/preprocessors.html
[py package]: https://pypi.org/project/tree-sitter
[py ts]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/py-tree-sitter
[pypi]: https://pypi.org
[rust]: https://rustup.rs
[tags crate]: https://crates.io/crates/tree-sitter-tags
[ts repo]: https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter
[wasi_sdk]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk
[wasi-sdk-releases]: https://github.com/WebAssembly/wasi-sdk/releases
[web-ts]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/web-tree-sitter
