Standardizing or deriving ESTree?

[David Teller]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on prototyping a proposal for a new JavaScript
feature. Any specification of this feature relies upon having a standard
AST representing JavaScript. Since the EcmaScript standard doesn't
provide a standard AST, I'm using ESTree.

So far, so good. For prototyping, that's all I need. However, if I want
to turn the prototype in a formal proposal, I need the AST definition to
be a standard. Unless I'm mistaken, ESTree is a de facto standard, but
not a formal standard, so in the current state of things, I can't rely
upon ESTree for a proposal. On the other hand, it would seem strange to
create a new AST from scratch given that ESTree works pretty well for a
number of applications.

From this predicament, I see two ways out:
1. is there any attempt to submit ESTree as an EcmaScript standard?
2. is there a way to mechanically derive the ESTree AST from the
EcmaScript BNF?

Any thoughts?
David

[Ariya Hidayat]

Hi David,

I am not aware of any initiative to formalize ESTree standard, i.e. moving it from de facto to de jure.

I doubt it makes sense for an AST standard to be part of ECMA-262. But then, I'm not heavily involved with TC-39. Perhaps Dave (Herman) has an opinion on this?

Best regards,

--

Ariya Hidayat, https://ariya.io