fix: TSInstall issues on macOS, hopefully once and for good

[aldanor]

I've noticed #887 and figured maybe we can do a bit better.

Pointing people at installing external c++ compilers like gcc (especially via homebrew which they may not be using) in order to use neorg is not the most welcoming thing to put in a readme 🙂

(Also note that the "point CC at a compiler with C++11 support" part of the readme is not entirely incorrect, because native clang does have C++11 support; it's just not the default.)

Here's a solution that I've tested myself on two different macOS boxes, does not require any additional dependencies and should work with system-provided clang.

This did require digging a bit into treesitter installer internals (unfortunately) so it may potential break with future treesitter releases, however that part of TS didn't seem to have changed much at all, so it's not too likely.

[LangdalP]

I cannot comment on the quality of this fix, but I can add that I am one of the users that got slightly annoyed that I could not install the neorg parser with the built in Clang, which does have C++11 support. I actually started using nvim-orgmode because of it, however I must admit that neorg looks attractive. My point is that this fix is very welcome from the user perspective!

[vhyrro]

Ah, this is very nice! Thank you for taking the time to figure this out. I don't have any Mac machines to test for reference, so we'll see if the fix works for everyone once it propagates. If so, I can finally remove all the extra steps required to use Neorg on mac :D 💜

[mattpolzin]

I can confirm this worked for me on an Intel Mac (shouldn't matter that it's Intel for this). The process still has caveats, but not nearly as severe of them!

1. I use Plug and when I did :PlugUpdate, although I did get the new Neorg version I still saw the old failed compilation behavior when running :Neorg sync-parsers; I had to restart Neovim to see the fixed compilation behavior.
2. :TSInstallSync norg still fails (naturally, since this fix is local to the Neorg command). Still worth noting, though.

[ddbrierton]

:Neorg sync-parsers does indeed work without error on macOS which is great. Thanks to all for the fix. However the fact that :TSInstallSync norg fails is kind of a problem, because every time there is a nvim-treesitter update (and there have been several in the last few days) it spews out error messages related to this, and any Mac user who is unfamiliar with the history of this problem is likely to think that something has become seriously broken with their neorg install.

[molleweide]

I am using MacOS 13 on macbook air M1:

Neorg sync-parsers yields:

Downloading tree-sitter-norg...
Creating temporary directory
Extracting tree-sitter-norg...
Compiling...
Could not load parser for norg: "...0.8.2/share/nvim/runtime/lua/vim/treesitter/language.lua:26: no parser for 'norg' language, see :help treesitter-parsers"
Unable to install norg parser.
[nvim-treesitter] [2/3, failed: 1] Downloading tree-sitter-norg_meta...
...
```.

[ddbrierton]

Could not load parser for norg: "...0.8.2/share/nvim/runtime/lua/vim/treesitter/language.lua:26: no parser for 'norg' language, see :help treesitter-parsers"

@molleweide have you tried upgrading neovim? You appear to be running 0.8.2. The latest release is 0.9.1.

[molleweide]

Could not load parser for norg: "...0.8.2/share/nvim/runtime/lua/vim/treesitter/language.lua:26: no parser for 'norg' language, see :help treesitter-parsers"

@molleweide have you tried upgrading neovim? You appear to be running 0.8.2. The latest release is 0.9.1.

yup i tried with 0.9.1 now and it sais the same.

[molleweide]

I am using MacOS 13 on macbook air M1:

Neorg sync-parsers yields:

Downloading tree-sitter-norg...
Creating temporary directory
Extracting tree-sitter-norg...
Compiling...
Could not load parser for norg: "...0.8.2/share/nvim/runtime/lua/vim/treesitter/language.lua:26: no parser for 'norg' language, see :help treesitter-parsers"
Unable to install norg parser.
[nvim-treesitter] [2/3, failed: 1] Downloading tree-sitter-norg_meta...
...
```.

I got Norg to build for myself now:

1. I was using too old a nvim-treesitter version (probably the main issue)
2. I had old packer package leftovers, (including old nvim-treesitter version) under XDG_DATA/nvim/site/packer/.. and nvim-treesitters function for obtaining the parser install dir for some reason returned this old packer install of nvim-treesitter.

Now, after cleaning up all those leftovers, running Neorg sync-parsers worked perfectly.

[0xFlo]

I think it's important to pointing people at installing external c++ compilers like gcc in order to use neorg is very important to put in the readme. Currently it's very vague and difficult to debug for beginners and people probably care 0 if their mac uses clang or gcc for compiling.

Install GCC (which includes the G++ compiler) with the following command:
$ brew install gcc

Set the Environment Variables: Run the following commands in your terminal to set the CC and CXX environment variables to use GCC and G++ from Homebrew:

sh
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export CC=/opt/homebrew/bin/gcc-13
export CXX=/opt/homebrew/bin/g++-13
Add to Shell Configuration: To ensure these settings persist in future terminal sessions, add the above lines to your shell configuration file (typically ~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile for Zsh or Bash, respectively). You can do this by running:

sh
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echo 'export CC=/opt/homebrew/bin/gcc-13' >> ~/.zshrc
echo 'export CXX=/opt/homebrew/bin/g++-13' >> ~/.zshrc
If you're using Bash, replace ~/.zshrc with ~/.bash_profile.

Reload Shell Configuration: Apply the changes by sourcing your configuration file. For Zsh, use:

sh
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source ~/.zshrc
For Bash, use:

sh
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source ~/.bash_profile
Retry the Parser Installation: With the correct compiler set, retry installing the tree-sitter-norg parser in Neovim:

vim
Copy code
:TSInstallSync norg

[aldanor]

I think it's important to pointing people at installing external c++ compilers like gcc in order to use neorg is very important to put in the readme. Currently it's very vague and difficult to debug for beginners and people probably care 0 if their mac uses clang or gcc for compiling.

@0xFlo Have you tried reading this PR's description? The whole point here was that you don't need to install any external compilers unless your environment is already messed up in some peculiar way. To repeat, you don't need gcc for it to work.

[0xFlo]

ah sorry, I was still having issues with mac mini m2 and tried finding help on discord but it worked fine switching to gcc