tree-sitter web-ui doesn't show parse tree in right pane

[sogaiu]

IIUC, according to a comment in the "Doesn't seem to update with treesitter playground" issue a related factor may be a version mismatch for emsdk.

It may be that for tree-sitter-cli version 0.19.3, using version 2.0.11 of emsdk works.

For tree-sitter-cli version 0.19.5, using version 2.0.24 of emsdk may work.

[NoahTheDuke]

Upgrading to tree-sitter-cli 0.20.6 (the latest version) fixes this.

[sogaiu]

Thanks for sharing!

[sogaiu]

On the topic of versions of emsdk, it appears that versions from (and above?) 2.0.18 may have issues currently: tree-sitter/tree-sitter#1098 (comment)

[NoahTheDuke]

All these issues make the tree-sitter ecosystem feel really fragile. Not your fault, of course, I'm just surprised and disappointed.

[sogaiu]

I'm hoping things will improve somewhat over time -- though I don't expect that to be soon.

For reference, there is this 1.0 Checklist.

[sogaiu]

I've been examining the tree-sitter repository's commit logs and source recently and my current impression is that the fragility stems from at least a few factors:

1. Use of emscripten - I think that's a neat project and have used it myself, but stability of API has not been something they've promised (AFAIU). I don't think there's really a good alternative to emscripten (at least not from a licensing perspective) at the current time and I'd much rather have some option than none.
2. Use of npm / Node.js - Almost every grammar repository uses a project structure and tooling that makes use of these bits. May be I don't need to go into why this can contribute to instability.

On a related note, I have experimented with a structure that removes the use of npm recently. I've learned that the tree-sitter command line tool is built to generate various binding files (for Node.js and Rust) and it is hard-wired to look for package.json to carry out at least one subcommand.

I think it's possible to stop using npm though and that's something I'm still exploring.

[sogaiu]

I think it's pretty clear that the original issue is caused by version mismatches between emscripten and the tree-sitter cli.

It would be nicer if the official docs (e.g. these) stated version requirements in detail (and there have been comments at the tree-sitter repository about this from time to time).

At present, if one uses a recent post 0.20.7 version of the tree-sitter cli (e.g. by compiling from source), emscripten 3.1.29 works. I've been using it with no obvious issues.

I'm going to close this issue as it's not specific to tree-sitter-clojure and I'm not sure it helps to keep it open. If someone feels otherwise though, I'm willing to discuss :)

[sogaiu]

I think this issue may resurface from time to time.

I've written up some details on it here for future reference.