tree-sitter-containerfile

A maintained Containerfile and Dockerfile grammar for tree-sitter.

This project is intended to be a reliable, actively maintained grammar for modern container build files, with published packages and generated bindings for Node.js, Python, Rust, Go, Swift, and C.

Why This Package

Containerfile and Dockerfile syntax continues to evolve across Docker, BuildKit, Podman, and related tooling. This grammar aims to close the gap for modern Dockerfile features, keep real-world fixtures parsing cleanly, and ship usable packages across the common tree-sitter binding ecosystems.

The historical tree-sitter-dockerfile npm package is not a dependable installation target: it currently resolves to a 0.0.1-security placeholder release. tree-sitter-containerfile is the maintained package name for this grammar and its generated artifacts.

Installation

npm

npm install tree-sitter-containerfile

PyPI

pip install tree-sitter-containerfile

Cargo

cargo add tree-sitter-containerfile

Go

import containerfile "github.com/wharflab/tree-sitter-containerfile"

Usage

Node.js

import Parser from "tree-sitter";
import Containerfile from "tree-sitter-containerfile";

const parser = new Parser();
parser.setLanguage(Containerfile);

const tree = parser.parse("FROM alpine:3.20\nRUN echo ok\n");
console.log(tree.rootNode.toString());

Python

from tree_sitter import Language, Parser
import tree_sitter_containerfile

parser = Parser(Language(tree_sitter_containerfile.language()))
tree = parser.parse(b"FROM alpine:3.20\nRUN echo ok\n")
print(tree.root_node.sexp())

Rust

let mut parser = tree_sitter::Parser::new();
let language = tree_sitter_containerfile::LANGUAGE;
parser.set_language(&language.into()).unwrap();

let tree = parser.parse("FROM alpine:3.20\nRUN echo ok\n", None).unwrap();
println!("{}", tree.root_node().to_sexp());

Go

package main

import (
	"fmt"

	sitter "github.com/tree-sitter/go-tree-sitter"
	containerfile "github.com/wharflab/tree-sitter-containerfile"
)

func main() {
	parser := sitter.NewParser()
	defer parser.Close()

	_ = parser.SetLanguage(containerfile.GetLanguage())
	tree := parser.Parse([]byte("FROM alpine:3.20\nRUN echo ok\n"), nil)
	defer tree.Close()

	fmt.Println(tree.RootNode().ToSexp())
}

Development

npm ci
npm run generate
tree-sitter test

The test suite includes the upstream corpus and integration parsing of the real-world Containerfile fixtures in examples/.

Migration Notes

Spaced ENV values can span line continuations. Consumers that inspect unquoted_string children should handle line_continuation nodes in addition to expansion nodes, because the internal _spaced_env_value rule aliases those values to unquoted_string.

Credits

This grammar started from camdencheek/tree-sitter-dockerfile. The project is being maintained and extended here under the tree-sitter-containerfile package name.

License

Licensed under MIT.

The original MIT notice for the upstream grammar and fixtures is preserved in LICENSE-MIT-CamdenCheek.