Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 22:07): Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 22:07):It would be really nice if syntax highlighting were supported on GitHub while browsing people's Roc code, especially for beginners who are still grasping the language.
Do you think the language is in a stable enough state to submit a PR for syntax highlighting? There are instructions here.
Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 22:16):Looking into it more, I don't think the grammar file is hosted there, it just links to another repo. This means you could update the grammar as the language changes without needing to submit a PR.
Is there anything else holding Roc back from submitting syntax highlighting PR to GitHub?
Elias Mulhall (Dec 11 2023 at 22:21):This came up not too long ago, there's general interest but no one has taken initiative yet, as far as I know!
https://roc.zulipchat.com/#narrow/stream/395097-compiler-development/topic/github.20syntax.20highlighting
Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 22:24):Thanks that's a recent discussion too. My Zulip search-fu has failed.
The grammar should probably be added under roc-lang on GitHub.
Richard Feldman (Dec 11 2023 at 22:38):yeah the only thing missing at this point is a volunteer to submit the PR to GitHub! :smiley:
Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 22:55):Is there an official grammar file to use?
Richard Feldman (Dec 11 2023 at 23:03):no, but I think as a starting point there's a TextMate grammar in the vs code extension
Richard Feldman (Dec 11 2023 at 23:04):I'm on mobile but it's the one by @Ivan Demchenko
Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 23:48):Looks like releases go out every few months and we just missed the latest one so there's no rush in doing this.
I might try to submit a PR over the next month when I find some time, but of course someone else is welcome to do it.
Ryan Bates (Dec 11 2023 at 23:56):Actually looks like it’s being deployed tomorrow morning so if someone submits a PR tonight there’s a chance it could be included. Not certain though.
Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 00:45):@Richard Feldman you mentioned in the other thread you want \(foo) to handle syntax highlighting correctly within the embed? Looks like the current grammar doesn't do this so we'd need to modify it. I have some experience with TextMate grammars and might be able to do this but doubt I could get to it tonight.
Also since the GitHub repo is linked we should put this under roc-lang user so it's official.
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 00:46):agreed, much much better to have something in there than nothing!
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 00:46):if you could get a PR in under the wire that would be amazing! :smiley:
Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 01:12):Uncertain if I will get to it tonight but will look into it after kids go to bed. :wink:
Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 05:39):I added a pull request here. We'll see what they say.
Johan Lindskogen (Dec 12 2023 at 12:43):they weren't convinced, it seems
Anton (Dec 12 2023 at 13:03):Well, the provided examples where indeed not real-world examples.
LoipesMas (Dec 12 2023 at 13:10):Maybe roc-parser would be a good example? It's not "official" and is actually used, not just a toy-project/example
Anton (Dec 12 2023 at 13:16):Yeah, roc-pg could be good as well
Agus Zubiaga (Dec 12 2023 at 13:20):I wonder what do they mean exactly by real world? Do packages count? Maybe AoC? monkey-roc?
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 13:25):roc-parser, roc-pg, and monkey-roc all seem like good examples! :thumbs_up:
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 13:25):could also do roc-iso8601
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 13:26): Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 15:15):Sorry about that guys. I assumed they had to be single file examples that could compile on their own which is what most other samples are I saw. Hmm.
Anton (Dec 12 2023 at 15:18):Don't sweat it :)
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 15:25):yeah no worries! It's actually great that the only feedback was about the samples because that's a pretty quick fix now that we have a few in this thread :smiley:
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 15:25):hopefully that can turn into a quick merge and then we'll be in with the next batch!
Brendan Hansknecht (Dec 12 2023 at 15:37):Our Dict.roc file might be good too
Brendan Hansknecht (Dec 12 2023 at 15:38):It is a full implementation of something used in production at multiple places.
Richard Feldman (Dec 12 2023 at 15:39):from the comment it sounds like they're specifically looking for examples outside the official language repos
Brendan Hansknecht (Dec 12 2023 at 15:39):Makes sense
Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 17:45):@Brendan Hansknecht what is the license of Eval.roc? Are you fine with UPL?
Brendan Hansknecht (Dec 12 2023 at 17:46):Yeah. Go for it
Ryan Bates (Dec 12 2023 at 18:13):I’ve updated the samples. We'll see if it goes through.
Ryan Bates (Dec 20 2023 at 19:26):Most of the samples are too big now. https://github.com/github-linguist/linguist/pull/6633#pullrequestreview-1790721040
I'll probably grab a few smaller interface files of roc-pg and see if that goes through.
Luke Boswell (Jan 29 2024 at 09:33):@Ryan Bates any updates on GH syntax highlighting? Is there anything we should prepare for the next drop? I'm not sure if you're still tracking this, but it would be super to work towards this :smiley:
Eli Dowling (Jan 30 2024 at 05:16):Oh also, can we use a tree-sitter grammar? That will provide more accurate highlighting and a bunch of nice extras like showing symbols in the same file.
https://github.com/faldor20/tree-sitter-roc
Eli Dowling (Jan 30 2024 at 08:40):Well i got a firm no-can-do from github on that one. Tree-sitter is it's own thing outside of linguist and we are far too obscure to get integrated into that
Brendan Hansknecht (Jan 30 2024 at 16:10):Who controls its integration?
Ryan Bates (Feb 04 2024 at 01:37):I updated the code samples to meet their requirements. Just waiting on them to approve now.
Hristo (Mar 08 2024 at 16:44):Merged 22 mins ago!:partying_face:
Anton (Mar 08 2024 at 16:47):Thanks for the sustained effort @Ryan Bates :heart:
Ryan Bates (Mar 08 2024 at 17:34):Nice! Looking forward to seeing it live on GitHub.
Anton (Mar 08 2024 at 17:39):Me too :)
Richard Feldman (Mar 08 2024 at 18:08):amazing!!! Thank you so much to everyone who helped get this in! :heart_eyes:
Fabian Schmalzried (Mar 14 2024 at 11:41):Looks like it is live. :tada:
Isaac Van Doren (Mar 15 2024 at 22:11):It is so fun to see Roc in the breakdown of languages in a github repo :star_struck:
Anton (Mar 16 2024 at 09:43):It's even using the Roc purple color :)
Luke Boswell (Apr 30 2024 at 10:34):Just noticed the following edge case doesn't look like right on GH syntax highlighting. It's the unicode string interpolation syntax which I guess is a bit different and probably needs special handling.
Or maybe this is doing what it should, and is just a color thing?
Screenshot-2024-04-30-at-20.32.24.png
https://github.com/roc-lang/basic-cli/blob/c5b18624aa4f8a50690f2f6703f688ca85311925/build.roc#L144
Anton (Apr 30 2024 at 10:48):Or maybe this is doing what it should, and is just a color thing?
It could be a security feature, to alert people that once printed it may look deceptively similar to a normal character.
Hristo (Apr 30 2024 at 11:17):I noticed the same in one of my PRs and I thought it was expected behaviour, too, but definitely a good point bringing it up just in case!
Kiryl Dziamura (Jun 27 2024 at 08:03):It's such a pleasure to start code snippets with ```roc :big_smile:
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Last updated: Jul 05 2025 at 12:14 UTC