ts-forge.nvim

Minimal tree-sitter parser manager for Neovim 0.12+. No plugin dependencies.

Compiles parsers from upstream grammar repos using the tree-sitter CLI, copies query files, and tracks revisions. Parsers bundled with Neovim are detected automatically and never overwritten.

Features

• Async install — does not block Neovim
• Auto-install on startup (optional)
• Bundled parser detection — prefers Neovim's built-in parsers and queries
• Monorepo support (e.g. typescript/tsx share a repo)
• Dependency resolution (e.g. cpp installs c first)
• Revision pinning with integrity checks
• Cross-platform — macOS (clang) and Linux (gcc)
• :checkhealth support

Requirements

• Neovim >= 0.12
• tree-sitter CLI >= 0.22
• git
• C compiler (cc)

Installation

lazy.nvim

{
    "reybits/ts-forge.nvim",
    config = function()
        require("ts-forge").setup({
            auto_install = true,
            ensure_installed = {
                "bash",
                "c",
                "cpp",
                "json",
                "lua",
                "markdown",
                "markdown_inline",
                "python",
                "yaml",
            },
        })
    end,
}

Configuration

require("ts-forge").setup({
    -- Parsers to ensure are installed.
    -- Bundled parsers (c, lua, markdown, etc.) are included automatically.
    ensure_installed = {},

    -- Automatically install missing parsers on startup (async).
    auto_install = false,

    -- Where to store compiled parsers, queries, and revision info.
    -- Default location is already on Neovim's runtimepath.
    install_dir = vim.fn.stdpath("data") .. "/site",
})

Commands

Command	Description
:TSInstall	Install all missing ensure_installed parsers
:TSInstall lua cpp	Install specific parsers (tab completion supported)
:TSUpdate	Reinstall parsers that are outdated or incomplete
:checkhealth ts-forge	Check requirements, installed parsers, and integrity

How it works

1. Fetch — shallow-clones a single commit from the grammar repo
2. Build — compiles with tree-sitter build (handles C/C++ scanners and platform flags)
3. Queries — copies .scm query files from the grammar repo to the install directory. For parsers bundled with Neovim, both the parser and queries are skipped entirely.
4. Track — records the installed revision and query status to skip unnecessary reinstalls

Install state is tracked per-parser in <install_dir>/parser-info/<lang>.revision. This file records the pinned revision and whether queries were copied, enabling integrity checks: if the .so or query files are deleted, the next install restores them.

Bundled parsers

Neovim 0.12 ships with parsers and queries for: c, lua, markdown, markdown_inline, query, vim, vimdoc. These are detected at runtime and preferred over compiled versions. You can safely include them in ensure_installed — they will be skipped.

Adding a parser

Add an entry to M.parsers in lua/ts-forge/init.lua:

rust = {
    url = "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-rust",
    rev = "<commit-hash-or-tag>",
},

For monorepo grammars, add location:

tsx = {
    url = "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-typescript",
    rev = "...",
    location = "tsx",
},

For parsers whose queries use ; inherits: from another language, add requires so the dependency is installed first:

cpp = {
    url = "https://github.com/tree-sitter/tree-sitter-cpp",
    rev = "...",
    requires = { "c" },
},

License

MIT License