GritQL integration progress (July 8)

[arendjr]

It's been a few months since I last wrote a progress update on Biome's GritQL runtime. Things have slowed a bit since I picked up a new contract job in May, but that doesn't mean no progress was made on Biome at all. In fact, I'm happy to announce that a first version of the biome search command has landed in main!

Now, I'm not going to lie to you. Right now, the command is still in a very rough shape. Even though the output of the command looks great when you specify a supported GritQL pattern, if your pattern contains invalid (or still unsupported) syntax, you're in for a bad time...

Current State

Here is an example of how things can look, courtesy of @BackupMiles:

Here is an example of how things can also look, courtesy of me:

To some extent, this is very much expected. The command is brand new -- so new it is not even ready for release yet -- and the bindings it uses to talk to the GritQL engine aren't even fully complete yet. For a current overview, see: #2582

So please bear with me, we're getting there, but there is still a lot of work to do.

Next Steps

There's a few concrete things that need to be done next:

• Improve diagnostics, both on Biome's side and that of the GritQL engine (as long as Grit errors are reported using anyhow, there's only so much we can do).
• Continue improving our bindings.
• Bug fixing

Help Wanted

One big advantage of having the biome search command in place -- even in its current buggy state -- is that we have an end-to-end showcase. This means that anyone can now jump in, pick up a bug, or work on a piece of missing bindings, and see the fruits of their labor without being blocked until I finally get things in a sufficiently working state. This is where we are now. Things may not be sufficiently working yet for our end users, but it's in main for those who are eager to try things out as well as for those who would like to lend a helping hand!

If you're interested in helping out, feel free to have a look at any of the linked issues or the umbrella issue for Biome plugin support. Or reach out to us on the #plugins channel on our Discord, or in the comments right here!

Thank you!