Unlocking Visibility: How to Get Your Custom Programming Language Recognized by GitHub

Creating a new programming language is a significant undertaking, and for developers, seeing their creation supported by major platforms like GitHub is a key milestone. A recent discussion in the GitHub Community highlighted a common question from a developer, grendizerh, building a language in C: "How can I get the language to be recognized by GitHub, in that way syntax highlighting and further features are available for users?" The community quickly rallied, providing a comprehensive guide to integrating a new language with GitHub's powerful ecosystem.

The Gateway: GitHub Linguist

The consensus among the community experts is clear: the path to GitHub recognition for a new programming language lies squarely with GitHub Linguist. This open-source Ruby gem is the backbone of GitHub's language detection system, responsible for identifying languages, applying syntax highlighting, and enabling various repository features. For any developer aiming to enhance their software engineering tool with GitHub integration, understanding Linguist is paramount.

Key Steps to GitHub Language Recognition

The discussion provided a detailed, step-by-step process for contributing your language to Linguist. Here’s a consolidated guide:

• Define a Unique File Extension: Choose a distinct file extension for your language (e.g., .mylang, .grh). Linguist primarily uses file extensions for initial language identification.
• Craft a Syntax Grammar: GitHub relies on syntax grammars to understand your language's structure for highlighting. You'll need to create either a TextMate grammar (.tmLanguage or .tmLanguage.json) or a Tree-sitter grammar. This grammar defines your language's keywords, comments, strings, operators, and other syntactic elements.
• Fork and Contribute to github/linguist:
  • Fork the official github/linguist repository.
  • Add your language's metadata to the languages.yml file. This entry typically includes the language name, file extensions, scope (tm_scope), type (e.g., programming), and a unique ID.
  • Place your TextMate or Tree-sitter grammar file within the grammars/ directory of the Linguist repository.
• Prepare Your Language for Review: Before submitting, ensure your language has:
  • A public repository with real-world code examples.
  • Basic documentation that explains its purpose and usage.
  • A robust grammar that doesn't easily break or produce errors.
• Test Your Grammar: It's highly recommended to test your TextMate grammar in an editor like VS Code, which uses the same grammar system. This helps catch issues before submission.
• Submit a Pull Request: Once everything is in place, open a pull request to the github/linguist repository.

An Important Consideration: Community Adoption

Beyond the technical steps, spenserblack raised a crucial point: "you should make sure your language is popular enough to be added to Linguist." GitHub Linguist maintainers typically require evidence of significant community adoption, often verified by a search for many unique users on GitHub, before merging PRs for new languages. This ensures that the effort invested in adding support benefits a broad user base, aligning with broader software engineering goals of impact and utility.

Conclusion

Getting your custom programming language recognized by GitHub is a well-defined process centered around contributing to GitHub Linguist. By meticulously defining your language's syntax, providing clear examples, and demonstrating community interest, you can unlock syntax highlighting and a richer experience for users of your innovative software engineering tool across GitHub. This not only enhances developer productivity but also helps your language gain visibility and adoption within the global development community.