Hey, I was searching for a grammar definition (bnf, antlr?) for Motoko language, and the best resource I found was this . I’ve searched @dfinity GitHub org and couldn’t find the source code for Motoko. Is there a reason why it is closed source? Will it be open-sourced in the future? Thanks

I believe we are hoping to open source soon. There is indeed an OCaml Menhir grammar, from which that file you found is derived. Out of curiosity, can I ask what you are planning to do with it?

[image] claudio: I believe we are hoping to open source soon. Hey thats good news :slight_smile: [image] claudio: Out of curiosity, can I ask what you are planning to do with it? It is a fun/hobby idea… :wink: I was searching for an IntelliJ plugin for Motoko and couldn’t find one. I…

I believe the VSCode plugin communicates with the language server, so it should be possible to use that with existing things for IntelliJ that support LSP. langserver.org lists this: [image] ballerina-platform/lsp4intellij This language client library provides language server protocol…

Funny that u listed a repo from ballerina :wink: I used to work on ballerina-lang compiler team :wink: I will check it out…

@kritzcreek might be able to help with that.

Thanks for the reply @paulyoung Just wanna make sure one tiny thing before I commit to this. I take it there isn’t going to be an official intellij-plugin for motoko from the dfinity team?

As far as I know, we certainly don’t have anything in the pipeline beyond more LSP support, if that helps.

it helps :slight_smile: Looking forward to see Mokoto be open-sourced. I will try and work with the grammar in the docs till then + checkout what @paulyoung suggested above. Thank you.

hey @ethdev1 please, lets us know if you make progress! I use JetBrains for development and would be great to use for Motoko too!

The very thing I was wondering, I use it too.

Will Motoko be open sourced?

Developers

Ori June 20, 2021, 7:17am 13

Just to cross-link for you:

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Motoko Syntax in EBNF Format Developers	1	268	January 10, 2024
Motoko grammar/parser code Language Support Motoko	11	2295	March 2, 2020
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Discussion - What's Missing for Motoko Adoption? Motoko	20	518	July 28, 2025
Good Motoko dev-tooling necessary for its success!? Developers	2	614	June 14, 2021

Will Motoko be open sourced?

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