proposal: tree-sitter-wit hosted project

[mkatychev]

Proposal to Create tree-sitter-wit

This document is a proposal to create tree-sitter-wit as a formal Hosted Project under the auspices of the TSC of the Bytecode Alliance, as specified in the TSC’s charter.

Proposing the adoption of tree-sitter-wit as a Bytecode Alliance hosted project.

Current Repository URL: https://github.com/liamwh/tree-sitter-wit

Proposed Repository URL: https://github.com/bytecodealliance/tree-sitter-wit

tree-sitter-wit is a Tree-sitter grammar implementation for WebAssembly
Interface Types (WIT), providing syntax highlighting, parsing, and language
support for WIT files in various editors and development environments. The
project enables developers working with WebAssembly Component
Model interfaces to have rich
editor support including syntax highlighting, code folding, and structural
parsing capabilities.

As WIT is a core, but rapidly changing, interface definition language for
WebAssembly components and WASI, this tooling can enable automated testing of design specs
to minimise regressions and inconsistencies as the specification evolves (this "bug" was found by running the ebnf through tree-sitter-wit).

Requirements

Alignment with the Bytecode Alliance Mission

Projects must have alignment with the Bytecode Alliance mission:

Our mission is to provide state-of-the-art foundations to develop runtime environments and language toolchains where security, efficiency, and modularity can all coexist across a wide range of devices and architectures. We enable innovation in compilers, runtimes, and tooling, focusing on fine-grained sandboxing, capabilities-based security, modularity, and standards such as WebAssembly and WASI.

The Bytecode Alliance is a group with a specific mission, and we therefore will only sponsor projects that are in alignment with and further that mission. For example, project sponsorship is untenable if the project undermines sandboxing, security, or standardization efforts.

tree-sitter-wit provides language toolchain infrastructure for WebAssembly
Component Model interfaces.
The project supports BA's modularity goals by providing syntax
highlighting, parsing, and editor support for component interfaces, and
supports standardization efforts by implementing proper tooling for the WIT
specification instantly in these supported languages:

• C#
• Go
• Haskell
• Java (JDK 22)
• JavaScript (Node.js)
• JavaScript (Wasm)
• Kotlin
• Python
• Rust
• Zig

Code Review

Description

All projects must gate merging pull requests on code reviews that audit not only for style but also substance, such as whether security invariants are properly maintained by the new code.

It is recommended, but not required, that hosted projects maintain a CODEOWNERS file and automatically assign reviewers as well.

Code reviews have a demonstrable impact on the quality of source code by catching bugs early, determining the best possible implementation, and fostering trust within the community. Timely responses let contributors know that their work is valued and encourages further contribution.

All proposed changes (Pull Requests) go through pull requests and CI validation
before merging. The project has comprehensive automated testing via GitHub
Actions that includes multi-platform testing (Ubuntu, Windows, macOS), parser
testing, and example parsing validation.

Code of Conduct

All Bytecode Alliance projects must:

• link to the Bytecode Alliance's Code of Conduct documents from a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file in root of the repository, and
• enforce the codes of conduct among the community and contributors, or escalate to the Bytecode Alliance CoC Team, if needed.

Having a code of conduct is crucial for creating a positive and respectful environment in any organization, community, or group. It serves as a set of guidelines that outline expected behavior and ethical standards for all members involved.

The project currently lacks a formal Code of Conduct document. If and when the
BA chooses to adopt this proposal, a CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file linking to the
Bytecode Alliance's Code of Conduct will be added to the repository root, and
maintainers will commit to enforcing the code of conduct.

Continuous Integration Testing

All projects must run continuous integration (CI) tests on all pull requests and merges. Key project features must be covered by CI.

If any part of the CI gates on merging changes that is not reproducible by external contributors, then the project must make affordances to support those external contributors.

Implementing CI offers several benefits to software projects, helping ensure correctness and quality, making it an essential practice for modern software development.

The project has comprehensive CI testing implemented via GitHub Actions. The
main CI workflow
runs on all pushes and pull requests, testing across multiple platforms
(Ubuntu, Windows, macOS-14) and includes parser testing and example parsing
validation. Additional workflows include grammar linting,
query file validation,
and fuzz testing.
All CI processes are reproducible by external contributors and core language
features are tested via the corpus tests.

Contributor Documentation

All projects must have a CONTRIBUTING.md document in the root of their repository. This document must provide, or link to another form of project-specific documentation that provides, high-quality contributor documentation.

See "How to build a CONTRIBUTING.md" by the Mozilla Science Lab for more details on what a high-quality CONTRIBUTING.md file looks like.

A CONTRIBUTING.md serves as a guide for potential contributors, outlining the expectations for individuals who wish to contribute to the project. The Bytecode Alliance is a community-driven software foundation and documents like CONTRIBUTING.md are necessary for fostering community contributions.

The project has a comprehensive CONTRIBUTING.md file here providing
detailed guidance for contributors including:

• how to create tests
• modify the grammar
• use just commands for development
• comply with current tree-sitter standards

The documentation includes specific instructions for
testing, formatting, and development workflows, making it easy for new
contributors to get started and understand the project's conventions.

Following the Bytecode Alliance Operational Principles

All projects must follow the Bytecode Alliance Operational Principles.

In pursuing our mission and vision, the Bytecode Alliance follows a set of operational principles aimed at keeping us aligned on three key aspects: what we want to create, how we want to work together, and how we want to work with others.

The project demonstrates alignment with BA operational principles through its
commitment to broad testing coverage, building for consistency and
interoperability (following tree-sitter ecosystem standards), and facilitating
collaboration (open source development with clear contribution guidelines).

Licensing Compatible with the Bytecode Alliance

All projects must be licensed under the Apache 2.0 license with an LLVM exception. Exemptions may be granted by the board.

All projects must only use dependencies and third-party code licensed under one of the following open source licenses:

• Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception
• Apache-2.0
• BSD-2-Clause
• BSD-3-Clause
• ISC
• MIT
• MPL-2.0
• OpenSSL
• Unicode-DFS-2016
• Zlib

All dependencies and third-party code must be properly attributed.

The source for all projects must be available to all members and must be available to all non-members under the same license.

All projects must automatically ensure that licensing requirements of dependencies are met in CI.

We strive to build an open community and a legally-compatible software ecosystem.

The project is already licensed under Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception.

Dependencies are limited and use compatible licenses: tree-sitter ecosystem
packages, standard Node.js/Rust build tools (node-addon-api, cc crate), and
development tools (ESLint, tree-sitter-cli). The project is fully open source
and available to all under the same license terms.

README

All hosted projects must have a README.md file in the root of the repository which begins with:

• The project name and logo (if one exists)
• A one-sentence description of the project
• <strong>A <a href="https://bytecodealliance.org/">Bytecode Alliance</a> hosted project</strong>

The most important information about the project should be "above the fold". Projects should identify themselves as Bytecode Alliance projects so that, with time, people associate the Bytecode Alliance with quality projects that they can rely on.

The project has a comprehensive README.md
(https://github.com/liamwh/tree-sitter-wit/blob/main/README.md) with:

• the project name
• a clear description ("WebAssembly Interface Types (WIT) grammar for tree-sitter")
• installation instructions & examples

The README will be updated to include the required Bytecode Alliance hosted
project designation and ensure all key information is prominently displayed
above the fold.

Release Process

Documentation of a release process that any project maintainer may execute to create a new release version of the software.

Multiple people must have permissions to publish releases. A github team must have access to publish packages and package ownership on the associated package repository when possible. For example a Rust project may have multiple owners on crates.io.

Projects and their releases shouldn't be tied to any single user's machine or keys to ensure continuity of the project. A project isn't an open, community project if only one person can publish releases.

Automation makes fewer mistakes than humans, and getting releases right is critical, since only releases are typically used downstream, not random commits from main.

The project currently uses semantic versioning (v1.1.0) and should be able to publish to
popular registries such as npm and crates.io.

Security Process

All projects must have a documented security process for reporting and disclosing vulnerabilities, managing patches that fix vulnerabilities, and announcing and making available security releases. Furthermore, projects must actually follow their documented processes.

It is recommended that request Common Vulnerability and Exposure (CVE) numbers for discovered vulnerabilities and report the CVE when disclosing the vulnerability.

A tool like dependabot may suffice for hosted projects. Dependabot should be used for security updates only, and not apply all updates indiscriminantly. Updating dependencies should otherwise be done with intention (never automatically). Automatic creation of pull requests is acceptable, but manual review is required to prevent supply chain attacks.

Bytecode Alliance projects must be a secure foundation for others to build upon. Transparency and a managed security release process is key to being this foundation.

The project currently lacks a formal security process documentation. If and
when the proposal is approved, a security policy will be established including
vulnerability reporting procedures, security release processes, and appropriate
escalation mechanisms. The project has minimal dependencies and automates
fuzzing in CI
to avoid potential security issues in the parser.

Dependabot or similar tooling can be added for security-only updates with
manual approval processes.

Semantic Versioning

All projects must follow either standard semantic versioning or their ecosystem's local-dialect of semantic versioning (for example, Rust and cargo's interpretation of semantic versioning slightly differs from the standard, but is acceptable for Rust Bytecode Alliance projects).

A clear versioning scheme is necessary for end-users. We desire consistency across projects and so the Bytecode Alliance has adopted semantic versioning as a required best practice.

The project follows semantic versioning as evidenced by the current version
1.1.0 in the repository.

Secrets Management

GitHub organization and repository level secrets should be used. Secrets must not be hard coded in source.

For secrets like passwords for the project's associated social media account, these should be stored in the password service paid for by the Bytecode Alliance. Contact the TSC for access and ability to manage a given secret.

Secure secret management is a requirement for a secure project. Additionally, projects and their associated accounts shouldn't be tied to any single user's machine or keys to ensure continuity of the project. A project isn't an open, community project if only one person can access its accounts.

The project has no hardcoded secrets in the source code. The current CI
workflows use only standard GitHub Actions and do not require any secrets.

If automated deployment to package manager registries is added (npm,
crates.io), any required secrets for publishing to package registries will be
managed through GitHub organization-level secrets, and publishing credentials
will be managed through BA's established processes to ensure continuity and
shared access among maintainers.

Supply Chain Security

All projects must follow a well-documented process for updating dependencies and auditing them for malicious supply-chain attacks.

When applicable, projects should:

• Integrate auditing tools in CI (such as cargo vet)
• Use code review and static analysis tools on dependencies

Finally, projects must document and follow their process for responding to upstream vulnerabilities in dependencies.

Our mission of developing runtime environments and language toolchains where security, efficiency, and modularity can all coexist necessarily means that we have performed our due diligence to mitigate software supply chain attacks.

The project has a minimal dependency footprint, using primarily tree-sitter
ecosystem packages and standard build tools. Dependencies are locked via
Cargo.lock and pnpm-lock.yaml files.

Sustainable Contributor Base

All projects must have regular contributions from multiple contributors.

It is recommended that hosted projects additionally have contributors affiliated with at least two different Bytecode Alliance organizations and that the project's leadership has representation from at least two different Bytecode Alliance organizations.

There must not be any private information necessary to fully contribute to the project.

A project is not considered healthy with only one contributor. An open, community project requires input from multiple stakeholders and does not rely on a single person.

The TSC may waive the above contributor base requirements under certain conditions. In particular, the TSC may decide to adopt crucial upstream dependencies of existing Bytecode Alliance projects that are otherwise effectively unmaintained or only have a single maintainer.

The project currently two primary maintainers (Liam Woodleigh-Hardinge, Mikhail Katychev).

The project has comprehensive documentation enabling new contributors to get
involved, and there is no private information required for contribution.

Version Control

All projects must be hosted on the Bytecode Alliance Organization on GitHub.

Access controls are managed via the Bytecode Alliance organization on GitHub. This allows for continuity of the project when hosted in one place. Finally, this is the only way to reasonable manage the projects within the organization.

The project is currently hosted at https://github.com/liamwh/tree-sitter-wit
and will be transferred to the Bytecode Alliance GitHub organization
(github.com/bytecodealliance/tree-sitter-wit) upon adoption. The repository
includes full history, comprehensive CI/CD configuration, and all project
assets necessary for the transfer.

Access controls will be managed through BA
organizational settings upon transfer.

Recommendations

Changelog

It is recommended that hosted projects highlight key additions, breaking changes, security fixes, and otherwise noteworthy changes in a changelog.

See keepachangelog.com for a recommended approach.

We are building an ecosystem that developers can depend on, and one small part of that is communicating important changes downstream.

The project currently does not maintain a formal changelog. If and when this
proposal is approved, a CHANGELOG.md file following the keepachangelog.com
format will be established to document releases, breaking changes, and
noteworthy updates for downstream users and integrators.

Continuous Fuzzing

Not all projects will necessarily benefit from fuzzing, for example benchmark suites. The TSC may choose lift this requirement for a particular project.

It is recommended that hosted projects have 24/7, round the clock, continuous fuzzing. The fuzzing should exercise significant amounts of the code base and test the project's most important properties, such as sandboxing. Bugs and vulnerabilities discovered via fuzzing should be addressed promptly.

Part of our open-source and open contribution model, the corpus and setup for running fuzzing should be open-sourced as part of the project.

Faults discovered via fuzzing must be reported privately to the project's core team so that the project's security vulnerability process can be followed properly, if necessary. For example, fuzzing infrastructure must not automatically open public issues for any fault that is discovered.

Continuous fuzzing is a valuable practice for projects, due to its significant benefits in improving security and reliability. Within the Bytecode Alliance, we host projects that provide a sandbox. The fidelity of these sandboxes must be battle-tested via a number of methodologies including automated fuzzing.

The project already implements parser fuzzing via GitHub Actions
using tree-sitter's fuzzing infrastructure. This fuzzing tests the parser
against various input combinations to identify potential crashes or incorrect
parsing behavior.

End-User Documentation

We abide by the OpenSSF requirements for documentation:

The documentation of an external interface explains to an end-user or developer how to use it. This would include its application program interface (API) if the software has one. If it is a library, document the major classes/types and methods/functions that can be called. If it is a web application, define its URL interface (often its REST interface). If it is a command-line interface, document the parameters and options it supports. In many cases it's best if most of this documentation is automatically generated, so that this documentation stays synchronized with the software as it changes, but this isn't required. The project MAY use hypertext links to non-project material as documentation. Documentation MAY be automatically generated (where practical this is often the best way to do so).

Furthermore, we identify a few different types of (sometimes overlapping) documentation:

• API documentation: Documentation for each type, method, function, and module in a library.
• Architectural overviews: High-level documentation about the architecture of the project and how it works from a 1000-foot view that helps endusers take advantage of the project in the best way possible and helps onboard new contributors.
• Examples: Code examples that show off how to use the project as a whole or particular features it supports.
• Guides and tutorials: Long-form prose, with code samples interspersed, that shows how to accomplish a task using the project.

API and CLI flag documentation is required for hosted projects; all other types are recommended.

Documentation is necessary for end-users to productively use the project; source code comments are not sufficient.

The project provides comprehensive end-user documentation including
installation instructions for multiple editors (Neovim with detailed setup for
Lazy.nvim and manual installation), examples of WIT syntax
highlighting,
and example WIT
files. The
README documents how to use the parser across different language bindings
(Node.js, Rust, Python, Go, Swift, C).

Issue Triage Process

Hosted projects must use an issue tracker for tracking individual issues.

It is recommended that hosted projects should additionally have a documented process for expeditiously triaging incoming issues and pull requests, and follow that process. Contributors should get prompt responses to their issues and pull requests, even if a response is not an immediate fix or review.

For a successful community-driven project, expedient communication within issues and PRs encourages further collaboration and contribution.

The project uses GitHub Issues for tracking but currently lacks a formal issue
triage process.

Leverage the Bytecode Alliance RFC Process

A request for comments (RFC) is a technique for soliciting the community and contributors for feedback on proposed major changes and decisions.

It is recommended that hosted projects follow the Bytecode Alliance RFC process for changes that significantly affect project stakeholders or contributors. The RFCs repo describes when an RFC is needed in more detail:

Many changes to Bytecode Alliance projects can and should happen through every-day GitHub processes: issues and pull requests. An RFC is warranted when:

• The work involves changes that will significantly affect stakeholders or project contributors. Each project may provide more specific guidance. Examples include:
  • Major architectural changes
  • Major new features
  • Simple changes that have significant downstream impact
  • Changes that could affect guarantees or level of support, e.g. removing support for a target platform
  • Changes that could affect mission alignment, e.g. by changing properties of the security model
• The work is substantial and you want to get early feedback on your approach.

This is a best practice for aligning contributors, the community, and downstream projects' needs with proposed technical implementations.

The project will adopt the Bytecode Alliance RFC process
for major changes that affect the parser's compatibility with the WIT
specification, changes to supported language bindings, or modifications that
could impact downstream tooling integration.

Given the project's role in validating WIT specification, RFCs would largely
be based around grammar correctness.

Production Use

It is recommended that hosted projects have demonstrated use in production by at least three independent organizations which are, in the TSC's judgement, of adequate quality and scope.

It is recommended that projects track production usage by organizations in an ADOPTERS.md at the root of the project, for example see ADOPTERS.md in Wasmtime.

Projects should demonstrate that they are practical, useful, and reliable enough to use in production.

The project has two current production project adopers:

• The Topiary formatter
• wit-lsp

Public Project Meetings and Notes

It is recommended that hosted projects hold regular and public project meetings. Meeting times and frequency should be advertised publicly, for example in the project's CONTRIBUTING.md. To avoid spam and "Zoom bombing", the video conferencing link need not be public, but should be available upon request.

Agendas for upcoming meetings and notes from past meetings should be published publicly. The notes should be in the bytecodealliance/meetings repository.

Public meetings encourage open communication, collaboration, and engagement within the project's community. Notes allow community members who were not present to remain aligned and can document any decisions made during the meeting.

The project currently does not hold regular meetings given it aims to follow the
ratification process of the WIT specification.

Sanitizers and Code Analysis

Static and dynamic code analysis tools (such as valgrind or miri) where applicable are recommended to be used by hosted projects.

It is recommended that hosted projects with non-trivial amounts of unsafe code (e.g. unsafe in Rust or any C/C++) run tests and fuzzers with the relevant sanitizers: Address Sanitizer, Memory Sanitizer, Thread Sanitizer, etc.

Automated code analysis is key to meeting our mission of developing runtime environments and language toolchains where security, efficiency, and modularity can all coexist.

The project includes generated C code for the parser and uses ESLint for
JavaScript grammar linting
(https://github.com/liamwh/tree-sitter-wit/blob/main/.github/workflows/lint-grammar.yml).
Generated (C code) Code Analysis is done through tree-sitter test.

[ricochet]

The TSC has approved this hosted project. Please initiate the project transfer to the Bytecode Alliance organization.

[mkatychev]

Thanks @ricochet, I've reached out to @liamwh to get this process started

[ricochet]

The project has been transferred and a team for project administration created, tree-sitter-wit-core. Check you github invites for the Bytecode Alliance @mkatychev and welcome!

[mkatychev]

Awesome! Thank you all for the effort!