Hi Nonjoe, Quoting Ninjoe (2025-07-22 12:33:05) > I'm one of those who were surprised by syntax highlighting not working > in the default installation, even though hx --health indicates that it > should. (Apologies—I haven’t read Debian’s README either.)
Thanks for admitting up front that your opinions are provided without reading the README file. I appreciate your sharing your opinions regardless. > I think that, at the very least, in the default installation, hx > --health shouldn't show check marks for syntax highlighting if it > doesn't work. I think this can mislead users—especially those who skip > the README. How --health option behaves is a different issue than the one tracked in this bugreport. Debian packaging does not patch Rust code for the --health argument, so if you want that health argument to behave differently, then please file a bugreport upstream about that. > > # Sources for grammar plugins is not in Debian > > > > Either hundreds of source packages need to be introduced to Debian, or > > the src:hx package would need to carry hundreds of embedded projects. > > > > I think the best approach is to package the sources for the more popular > > grammars only, and think the best approach is that those interested in > > some grammar join the tree-sitter team and file a bugreport against hx > > when sources are available in Debian. > > I would also like to see the default installation support some popular > grammars out of the box. Having to install g++ on a server just to > enable syntax highlighting for, say, JavaScript and CSS, doesn't feel > right. In contrast, Helix package on Fedora and Arch includes many > pre-compiled grammars and is quite ready for use by most users. I don't know how other distros handle build-time dependencies, but guess that they either have network access during build or that additional dependencies have been packaged for those distributions which are not packaged in Debian. I.e. exactly my point in the text you quoted, so I fail to see any relevancy in your note above - please do elaborate if you think I am missing something helpful there. > > # Grammar plugins slows startup of Helix > > > > My main concern with many plugins is not size but speed: As I recall, > > I experienced a noticable slowdown in startup of Helix when many plugins > > are loaded. > > I'm not sure if this is still the case. At least, on my Fedora desktop, > the distro's Helix package installs over 200 pre-compiled grammars and > it starts instantly for me. Could you perhaps share how beefy or not your machine is, and how big files you tried to open and how fast they opened? Then I will try do the same if/when I get around to loading the hundreds of plugins again. - Jonas -- * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt * Tlf.: +45 40843136 Website: http://dr.jones.dk/ * Sponsorship: https://ko-fi.com/drjones [x] quote me freely [ ] ask before reusing [ ] keep private
