I like that this seems to have ways to address two common problems with tree diffs:
1. The nesting/unnesting/merging/splitting problem that many tree diff algorithms have a hard time with are handled here by allowing the diff to see insertion/deletion of delimiters. I guess one way to see it is that the tool is doing a text level diff augmented with the tree structures to calculate the cost of diffs and choose the cheapest one it can find.
2. The problem of syntax errors. I think this just depends a lot on how well tree sitter copes with syntax errors (or weird syntax that’s hard to parse or eg a committed merge conflict) but my understanding is that it is designed to cope ok with syntax errors.
I basically felt that tree diffing was not very viable because of these issues but seeing this project I think I’ve changed my mind. I guess it remains to be seen how good performance is though (maybe this isn’t good enough yet if it can sometimes be very slow).
1. The nesting/unnesting/merging/splitting problem that many tree diff algorithms have a hard time with are handled here by allowing the diff to see insertion/deletion of delimiters. I guess one way to see it is that the tool is doing a text level diff augmented with the tree structures to calculate the cost of diffs and choose the cheapest one it can find.
2. The problem of syntax errors. I think this just depends a lot on how well tree sitter copes with syntax errors (or weird syntax that’s hard to parse or eg a committed merge conflict) but my understanding is that it is designed to cope ok with syntax errors.
I basically felt that tree diffing was not very viable because of these issues but seeing this project I think I’ve changed my mind. I guess it remains to be seen how good performance is though (maybe this isn’t good enough yet if it can sometimes be very slow).