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* Language Servers and Emacs
@ 2017-04-11 16:28 Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
                   ` (5 more replies)
  0 siblings, 6 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-11 16:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-devel

Microsoft has invented an interesting new protocol for IDEs
and code editors to talk to language tools (like compilers) to do
things like smart autocompletion, jumping to code definitions, and the
like.

The idea is that compilers and similar tools generally know a lot
about the structure of a language and can provide help to an editor as
an external service, so the editor doesn't need to handle parsing,
symbol tables, etc. for the language on its own. The editor can just
ask the compiler or language tool for the information when it needs
it.

The protocol is open and they have no intellectual property claims on
it. It is JSON based and should be straightforward to support.

A general description is at:

http://langserver.org/

And detailed protocol information is at:

https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol

It was originally designed for their "Roslyn" C# compiler (which is
free software, it's Apache licensed) to integrate with their own
editors and IDEs, but other compiler projects and editors seem to be
adopting the thing. There are now language servers people have built
for a lot of languages, and there's support appearing for the
protocol in a bunch of editors.

I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.

I recall that a while ago, RMS had a lot of problems with the idea
of opening up GCC in ways that might have made it possible for people
to use it too much for proprietary compilers. Using the Language
Server Protocol, it should be possible for GCC and other free
language tools to talk to a variety of IDEs and Editors (including, I
hope, Emacs) to allow advanced modern code editing _without_ the
sorts of risks he was worried about.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
  2017-04-11 16:44   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-11 19:32   ` Evgeniy Dushistov
  2017-04-11 18:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
                   ` (4 subsequent siblings)
  5 siblings, 2 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Philippe Vaucher @ 2017-04-11 16:36 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: Emacs developers

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 329 bytes --]

>
> I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
> interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
> really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.
>

Apparently someone started working on this outside of emacs-dev:
https://github.com/sourcegraph/emacs-lsp

Philippe

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
@ 2017-04-11 16:44   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-11 19:32   ` Evgeniy Dushistov
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-11 16:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Philippe Vaucher; +Cc: Emacs developers

On Tue, 11 Apr 2017 18:36:07 +0200 Philippe Vaucher
<philippe.vaucher@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community
> > would be interested in this capability, though I suspect that it
> > would also be really neat if GCC developed a language server for
> > C and C++. 
> 
> Apparently someone started working on this outside of emacs-dev:
> https://github.com/sourcegraph/emacs-lsp

Indeed, though it seems fairly simple compared to what is possible.
It should be feasible, for example, to do things like having a
language mode highlight errors (not just syntax errors but type
errors and the like) in real time, provide easy renaming of
identifiers across whole projects, provide smart completion, etc.

I'm also imagining features where you can request documentation for
any function or variable and it will pop up a formatted version of
the documentation comment, just like you can do for elisp today.

Especially if GCC and other Gnu tools gained Language Server
capabilities, this could provide a substantial win for programmers
using Emacs.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
@ 2017-04-11 18:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
  2017-04-12  7:39 ` Helmut Eller
                   ` (3 subsequent siblings)
  5 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Eli Zaretskii @ 2017-04-11 18:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: emacs-devel

> Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2017 12:28:16 -0400
> From: "Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>
> 
> I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
> interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
> really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.

https://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc/2017-03/msg00105.html



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
  2017-04-11 16:44   ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-11 19:32   ` Evgeniy Dushistov
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Evgeniy Dushistov @ 2017-04-11 19:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Philippe Vaucher; +Cc: Emacs developers, Perry E. Metzger

On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 06:36:07PM +0200, Philippe Vaucher wrote:
>     I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
>     interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
>     really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.
> 
> 
> Apparently someone started working on this outside of emacs-dev: https://
> github.com/sourcegraph/emacs-lsp

I think this fork or just project with the same name is more polular:

https://github.com/vibhavp/emacs-lsp

-- 
/Evgeniy



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
  2017-04-11 18:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
@ 2017-04-12  7:39 ` Helmut Eller
  2017-04-12 12:59   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-12  9:03 ` Vibhav Pant
                   ` (2 subsequent siblings)
  5 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Helmut Eller @ 2017-04-12  7:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-devel

On Tue, Apr 11 2017, Perry E. Metzger wrote:

> I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
> interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
> really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.

The client side of the protocol seems fairly easy to implement in Emacs,
so I think this is primarily a (big) task for GCC developers.  We could
implement a server for Elisp on top of bytecomp.el, but I doubt that
anybody has time/motivation for that.

I note that some Clang developers are working on a server:
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2017-January/052458.html

So it seems likely that Clang will support the protocol long before GCC
does.  It might also have political implications if Emacs implements the
client side if Clang is the only server for C/C++.

Helmut




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
                   ` (2 preceding siblings ...)
  2017-04-12  7:39 ` Helmut Eller
@ 2017-04-12  9:03 ` Vibhav Pant
  2017-04-12 13:07   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-13 13:58 ` Richard Stallman
  2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
  5 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Vibhav Pant @ 2017-04-12  9:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org

I have been working on an emacs implementation for the past few
months: https://github.com/vibhavp/emacs-lsp
It integrates with eldoc, completion-at-point, xref and flycheck.
Coupling it with various CEDET components (ECB comes to mind) is
planned for the future.

At some point, I'd like to get this into ELPA.

Regards,
Vibhav

On Tue, Apr 11, 2017 at 9:58 PM, Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
> Microsoft has invented an interesting new protocol for IDEs
> and code editors to talk to language tools (like compilers) to do
> things like smart autocompletion, jumping to code definitions, and the
> like.
>
> The idea is that compilers and similar tools generally know a lot
> about the structure of a language and can provide help to an editor as
> an external service, so the editor doesn't need to handle parsing,
> symbol tables, etc. for the language on its own. The editor can just
> ask the compiler or language tool for the information when it needs
> it.
>
> The protocol is open and they have no intellectual property claims on
> it. It is JSON based and should be straightforward to support.
>
> A general description is at:
>
> http://langserver.org/
>
> And detailed protocol information is at:
>
> https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol
>
> It was originally designed for their "Roslyn" C# compiler (which is
> free software, it's Apache licensed) to integrate with their own
> editors and IDEs, but other compiler projects and editors seem to be
> adopting the thing. There are now language servers people have built
> for a lot of languages, and there's support appearing for the
> protocol in a bunch of editors.
>
> I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
> interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
> really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.
>
> I recall that a while ago, RMS had a lot of problems with the idea
> of opening up GCC in ways that might have made it possible for people
> to use it too much for proprietary compilers. Using the Language
> Server Protocol, it should be possible for GCC and other free
> language tools to talk to a variety of IDEs and Editors (including, I
> hope, Emacs) to allow advanced modern code editing _without_ the
> sorts of risks he was worried about.
>
> Perry
> --
> Perry E. Metzger                perry@piermont.com
>



-- 
Vibhav Pant
vibhavp@gmail.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-12  7:39 ` Helmut Eller
@ 2017-04-12 12:59   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-25 12:17     ` Phillip Lord
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-12 12:59 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Helmut Eller; +Cc: emacs-devel

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 09:39:48 +0200 Helmut Eller
<eller.helmut@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 11 2017, Perry E. Metzger wrote:
> 
> > I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community
> > would be interested in this capability, though I suspect that it
> > would also be really neat if GCC developed a language server for
> > C and C++.  
> 
> The client side of the protocol seems fairly easy to implement in
> Emacs, so I think this is primarily a (big) task for GCC
> developers.  We could implement a server for Elisp on top of
> bytecomp.el, but I doubt that anybody has time/motivation for that.
> 
> I note that some Clang developers are working on a server:
> http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2017-January/052458.html
> 
> So it seems likely that Clang will support the protocol long before
> GCC does.  It might also have political implications if Emacs
> implements the client side if Clang is the only server for C/C++.

There are servers for many other languages too, this is not a C/C++
only issue. (And I think GCC needs to gain this capability in any
case, it appears that it is being rapidly adopted. There are now
langserv implementations for dozens of languages -- Python, Java, PHP,
Go, Rust, Swift, JavaScript, C#, Julia, Scala, and the list goes on,
plus there are a bunch of IDEs adopting the protocol too, and support
for the vim and Atom editors are coming.)

Architecturally, this is certainly the right thing. One would
generally far prefer to have the language implementation help the
editor with parsing than have to re-implement parsing inside the
editor.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-12  9:03 ` Vibhav Pant
@ 2017-04-12 13:07   ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-13  6:19     ` Vibhav Pant
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-12 13:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Vibhav Pant; +Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org

On Wed, 12 Apr 2017 14:33:07 +0530 Vibhav Pant <vibhavp@gmail.com>
wrote:
> I have been working on an emacs implementation for the past few
> months: https://github.com/vibhavp/emacs-lsp
> It integrates with eldoc, completion-at-point, xref and flycheck.
> Coupling it with various CEDET components (ECB comes to mind) is
> planned for the future.
> 
> At some point, I'd like to get this into ELPA.

That looks very cool! However, your warning on the web site
makes it sound like it is not ready to be used. (I.e. you say "This
package is still under development, and is not recommended for daily
use.") Is that just an abundance of caution?

And how hard is it to add support for other clients/languages besides
Go and Rust? (Some instructions in the repository might make it
easier for people to help bringing this up to speed...)

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-12 13:07   ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-13  6:19     ` Vibhav Pant
  2017-04-14  9:06       ` Lele Gaifax
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Vibhav Pant @ 2017-04-13  6:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 6:37 PM, Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
> That looks very cool! However, your warning on the web site
> makes it sound like it is not ready to be used. (I.e. you say "This
> package is still under development, and is not recommended for daily
> use.") Is that just an abundance of caution?

In some ways, yes. lsp-mode still has issues with *some* language server
(the Python one is the most mature one AFAIK, and works just fine).

> And how hard is it to add support for other clients/languages besides
> Go and Rust? (Some instructions in the repository might make it
> easier for people to help bringing this up to speed...)
>

I've updated the list of supported languages on the README. Adding
supporting for other languages is rather easy, you just need to tell
lsp-mode about how the language server connects and communicates
with clients. The remaining is handled by the package itself. For instance,
this is how Python is supported:
https://github.com/vibhavp/emacs-lsp/blob/c7c6a477b0c8aff1ce8aa032992cd10085ee0143/lsp-mode.el#L92

-- 
Vibhav Pant
vibhavp@gmail.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
                   ` (3 preceding siblings ...)
  2017-04-12  9:03 ` Vibhav Pant
@ 2017-04-13 13:58 ` Richard Stallman
  2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
  5 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Richard Stallman @ 2017-04-13 13:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: emacs-devel

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

This sounds interesting.  I will look at what it does.

Thanks.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-13  6:19     ` Vibhav Pant
@ 2017-04-14  9:06       ` Lele Gaifax
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Lele Gaifax @ 2017-04-14  9:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: emacs-devel

Vibhav Pant <vibhavp@gmail.com> writes:

> On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 6:37 PM, Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> wrote:
>> That looks very cool! However, your warning on the web site
>> makes it sound like it is not ready to be used. (I.e. you say "This
>> package is still under development, and is not recommended for daily
>> use.") Is that just an abundance of caution?
>
> In some ways, yes. lsp-mode still has issues with *some* language server
> (the Python one is the most mature one AFAIK, and works just fine).

Indeed it is very nice: I gave it a shot on a Python project, and will surely
try it again.

One thing that surprised me is that it asks about launching the underlying
"pyls" tool once for each visited source: is that right? As my project has
hundreds of Python modules, wouldn't that put Emacs under pressure?

One minor observation on the lisp sources: I think it's not necessary to
explicitly quote lambdas as in the following snippet

  (lsp-define-client 'python-mode "python" 'stdio #'(lambda () default-directory)
    :command '("pyls")
    :name "Python Language Server")

Thank you,
ciao, lele.
-- 
nickname: Lele Gaifax | Quando vivrò di quello che ho pensato ieri
real: Emanuele Gaifas | comincerò ad aver paura di chi mi copia.
lele@metapensiero.it  |                 -- Fortunato Depero, 1929.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
                   ` (4 preceding siblings ...)
  2017-04-13 13:58 ` Richard Stallman
@ 2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
  2017-04-21  2:08   ` Richard Stallman
  2017-04-21  3:44   ` Tom Tromey
  5 siblings, 2 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Philipp Stephani @ 2017-04-20 10:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger, emacs-devel

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2244 bytes --]

Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com> schrieb am Di., 11. Apr. 2017 um
18:28 Uhr:

> Microsoft has invented an interesting new protocol for IDEs
> and code editors to talk to language tools (like compilers) to do
> things like smart autocompletion, jumping to code definitions, and the
> like.
>
> The idea is that compilers and similar tools generally know a lot
> about the structure of a language and can provide help to an editor as
> an external service, so the editor doesn't need to handle parsing,
> symbol tables, etc. for the language on its own. The editor can just
> ask the compiler or language tool for the information when it needs
> it.
>
> The protocol is open and they have no intellectual property claims on
> it. It is JSON based and should be straightforward to support.
>
> A general description is at:
>
> http://langserver.org/
>
> And detailed protocol information is at:
>
> https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol
>
> It was originally designed for their "Roslyn" C# compiler (which is
> free software, it's Apache licensed) to integrate with their own
> editors and IDEs, but other compiler projects and editors seem to be
> adopting the thing. There are now language servers people have built
> for a lot of languages, and there's support appearing for the
> protocol in a bunch of editors.
>
> I'm mentioning this here because I think the Emacs community would be
> interested in this capability, though I suspect that it would also be
> really neat if GCC developed a language server for C and C++.
>
> I recall that a while ago, RMS had a lot of problems with the idea
> of opening up GCC in ways that might have made it possible for people
> to use it too much for proprietary compilers. Using the Language
> Server Protocol, it should be possible for GCC and other free
> language tools to talk to a variety of IDEs and Editors (including, I
> hope, Emacs) to allow advanced modern code editing _without_ the
> sorts of risks he was worried about.
>

I agree and think that language servers are very promising and we should
have strong support for the protocol in Emacs (preferably even in core).
They neatly solve the problem of having to implement support for each and
every language in Elisp.

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2844 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
@ 2017-04-21  2:08   ` Richard Stallman
  2017-04-21 12:42     ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-21  3:44   ` Tom Tromey
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Richard Stallman @ 2017-04-21  2:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Philipp Stephani; +Cc: emacs-devel, perry

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I am trying to interest the GCC maintainers in supporting this
protocol.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
  2017-04-21  2:08   ` Richard Stallman
@ 2017-04-21  3:44   ` Tom Tromey
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Tom Tromey @ 2017-04-21  3:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Philipp Stephani; +Cc: emacs-devel, Vibhav Pant, Perry E. Metzger

Philipp> I agree and think that language servers are very promising and
Philipp> we should have strong support for the protocol in Emacs
Philipp> (preferably even in core).

I too would like to see this support in core.
Up-thread, Vibhav expressed interest in putting it into ELPA.
That would be reasonable as well, though core would be better, IMO.

What are the blockers to doing this?

Tom



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-21  2:08   ` Richard Stallman
@ 2017-04-21 12:42     ` Perry E. Metzger
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-21 12:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Richard Stallman; +Cc: Philipp Stephani, emacs-devel

On Thu, 20 Apr 2017 22:08:29 -0400 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
wrote:
> [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider
> ]]] [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all
> enemies,     ]]] [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow
> Snowden's example. ]]]
> 
> I am trying to interest the GCC maintainers in supporting this
> protocol.

That is good to hear. Please let us know how the discussion goes.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-12 12:59   ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-25 12:17     ` Phillip Lord
  2017-04-25 23:06       ` Katherine Cox-Buday
  2017-04-26 17:14       ` Richard Stallman
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Phillip Lord @ 2017-04-25 12:17 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: Helmut Eller, emacs-devel

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

>> So it seems likely that Clang will support the protocol long before
>> GCC does.  It might also have political implications if Emacs
>> implements the client side if Clang is the only server for C/C++.
>
> There are servers for many other languages too, this is not a C/C++
> only issue. (And I think GCC needs to gain this capability in any
> case, it appears that it is being rapidly adopted. There are now
> langserv implementations for dozens of languages -- Python, Java, PHP,
> Go, Rust, Swift, JavaScript, C#, Julia, Scala, and the list goes on,
> plus there are a bunch of IDEs adopting the protocol too, and support
> for the vim and Atom editors are coming.)
>
> Architecturally, this is certainly the right thing. One would
> generally far prefer to have the language implementation help the
> editor with parsing than have to re-implement parsing inside the
> editor.


Apologies for the zombie posting -- easter holidays and all.

It would be interesting to do a comparison with "nrepl" which is the
protocol that CIDER, the emacs package for clojure, uses. This is pretty
feature complete now and it would give an good side-by-side
comparison. I think that ENSIME (for Scala) has a protocol in there as
well.

I agree with you, having a standard to use is a very good thing.

Phil



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-25 12:17     ` Phillip Lord
@ 2017-04-25 23:06       ` Katherine Cox-Buday
  2017-04-26  2:00         ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-26 17:14       ` Richard Stallman
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Katherine Cox-Buday @ 2017-04-25 23:06 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phillip Lord; +Cc: emacs-devel, Helmut Eller, Perry E. Metzger

> I think that ENSIME (for Scala) has a protocol in there as
> well.

They do, and there is an open discussion[1] on supporting the LSP
protocol.

Personally, I'd like to see broad support for this in emacs so I can
learn the "emacs way" of interacting with code that works across various
languages with different backends. It seems like every language's
mode/backend does things slightly differently.

-- 
Katherine

[1] - https://github.com/ensime/ensime-server/issues/1498



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-25 23:06       ` Katherine Cox-Buday
@ 2017-04-26  2:00         ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-26 11:15           ` Phillip Lord
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-26  2:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Katherine Cox-Buday; +Cc: emacs-devel, Helmut Eller, Phillip Lord

On Tue, 25 Apr 2017 18:06:40 -0500 Katherine Cox-Buday
<cox.katherine.e@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think that ENSIME (for Scala) has a protocol in there as
> > well.  
> 
> They do, and there is an open discussion[1] on supporting the LSP
> protocol.
> 
> Personally, I'd like to see broad support for this in emacs so I can
> learn the "emacs way" of interacting with code that works across
> various languages with different backends. It seems like every
> language's mode/backend does things slightly differently.

Indeed.

I suspect that most of the ways of interacting with external language
tools other than LSP will fade over time, but whether or not that's
the case, it clearly seems to be smarter to have an external language
tool than to have to duplicate the work of parsing and managing
symbol tables inside the editor.

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-26  2:00         ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-26 11:15           ` Phillip Lord
  2017-04-26 12:14             ` Helmut Eller
  2017-04-26 13:24             ` Perry E. Metzger
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Phillip Lord @ 2017-04-26 11:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: Helmut Eller, Katherine Cox-Buday, emacs-devel

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

> On Tue, 25 Apr 2017 18:06:40 -0500 Katherine Cox-Buday
> <cox.katherine.e@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > I think that ENSIME (for Scala) has a protocol in there as
>> > well.  
>> 
>> They do, and there is an open discussion[1] on supporting the LSP
>> protocol.
>> 
>> Personally, I'd like to see broad support for this in emacs so I can
>> learn the "emacs way" of interacting with code that works across
>> various languages with different backends. It seems like every
>> language's mode/backend does things slightly differently.
>
> Indeed.
>
> I suspect that most of the ways of interacting with external language
> tools other than LSP will fade over time, but whether or not that's
> the case, it clearly seems to be smarter to have an external language
> tool than to have to duplicate the work of parsing and managing
> symbol tables inside the editor.

Well, this depends whether LSP is good or not. Even then, history
suggests that introduction of the one true standard, just results in yet
another technique for the same thing.

A brief look at LSP seems that it's relatively limited in scope,
though; it has some discussion of "capabilities" and "execute
command". How extensible is it? For instance, NREPL allows evalling
code, or loading files? Would it be possible to send enough data through
LSP to support edebug step through debugging for instance?

Phil



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-26 11:15           ` Phillip Lord
@ 2017-04-26 12:14             ` Helmut Eller
  2017-04-26 13:24             ` Perry E. Metzger
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Helmut Eller @ 2017-04-26 12:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phillip Lord; +Cc: emacs-devel

On Wed, Apr 26 2017, Phillip Lord wrote:

> A brief look at LSP seems that it's relatively limited in scope,
> though; it has some discussion of "capabilities" and "execute
> command". How extensible is it?

New "capabilities" can be registered and unregistered dynamically.  So
I'd say it's very extensible.

> For instance, NREPL allows evalling
> code, or loading files? Would it be possible to send enough data through
> LSP to support edebug step through debugging for instance?

Yes, it could be done (with non-standard capabilities).

Helmut



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-26 11:15           ` Phillip Lord
  2017-04-26 12:14             ` Helmut Eller
@ 2017-04-26 13:24             ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-26 15:23               ` Phillip Lord
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-26 13:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phillip Lord; +Cc: Helmut Eller, Katherine Cox-Buday, emacs-devel

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:15:19 +0100 phillip.lord@russet.org.uk
(Phillip Lord) wrote:
> > I suspect that most of the ways of interacting with external
> > language tools other than LSP will fade over time, but whether or
> > not that's the case, it clearly seems to be smarter to have an
> > external language tool than to have to duplicate the work of
> > parsing and managing symbol tables inside the editor.  
> 
> Well, this depends whether LSP is good or not.

You might re-read what I was saying. It is more general than LSP. My
point was that whether _LSP_ is the One True Way or not, the idea of
interacting with language tools to get information about the program
instead of building a parser for every language into the editor is
clearly a good one. So that doesn't depend on whether LSP is good or
not. :)

> Even then, history
> suggests that introduction of the one true standard, just results
> in yet another technique for the same thing.
> 
> A brief look at LSP seems that it's relatively limited in scope,
> though; it has some discussion of "capabilities" and "execute
> command". How extensible is it? For instance, NREPL allows evalling
> code, or loading files? Would it be possible to send enough data
> through LSP to support edebug step through debugging for instance?

It's really intended for helping editors out, but it is extensible.
Have a read:

https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol
https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol/blob/master/protocol.md

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-26 13:24             ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-26 15:23               ` Phillip Lord
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Phillip Lord @ 2017-04-26 15:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: Helmut Eller, Katherine Cox-Buday, emacs-devel

"Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com> writes:

> On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:15:19 +0100 phillip.lord@russet.org.uk
> (Phillip Lord) wrote:
>> > I suspect that most of the ways of interacting with external
>> > language tools other than LSP will fade over time, but whether or
>> > not that's the case, it clearly seems to be smarter to have an
>> > external language tool than to have to duplicate the work of
>> > parsing and managing symbol tables inside the editor.  
>> 
>> Well, this depends whether LSP is good or not.
>
> You might re-read what I was saying. It is more general than LSP. My
> point was that whether _LSP_ is the One True Way or not, the idea of
> interacting with language tools to get information about the program
> instead of building a parser for every language into the editor is
> clearly a good one. So that doesn't depend on whether LSP is good or
> not. :)

You are right, I didn't read your statement clearly enough.

I am not 100% convinced though. I think, some of the work will remain
with the IDE, both because of speed and because of the difference
between in memory and on file. Syntax highlighting is an obvious
example at least in part.

>> A brief look at LSP seems that it's relatively limited in scope,
>> though; it has some discussion of "capabilities" and "execute
>> command". How extensible is it? For instance, NREPL allows evalling
>> code, or loading files? Would it be possible to send enough data
>> through LSP to support edebug step through debugging for instance?
>
> It's really intended for helping editors out, but it is extensible.
> Have a read:
>
> https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol
> https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol/blob/master/protocol.md

Okay.



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-25 12:17     ` Phillip Lord
  2017-04-25 23:06       ` Katherine Cox-Buday
@ 2017-04-26 17:14       ` Richard Stallman
  2017-04-27 18:15         ` Perry E. Metzger
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Richard Stallman @ 2017-04-26 17:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Phillip Lord; +Cc: emacs-devel, eller.helmut, perry

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

I am urging the GCC developers to work on implementing the language
server.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-26 17:14       ` Richard Stallman
@ 2017-04-27 18:15         ` Perry E. Metzger
  2017-04-27 23:56           ` Richard Stallman
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Perry E. Metzger @ 2017-04-27 18:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Richard Stallman; +Cc: emacs-devel

On Wed, 26 Apr 2017 13:14:06 -0400 Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org>
wrote:
> I am urging the GCC developers to work on implementing the language
> server.

I would then suggest that Language Server Protocol support be
integrated into Emacs (as opposed to being available in ELPA or what
have you).

Perry
-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2017-04-27 18:15         ` Perry E. Metzger
@ 2017-04-27 23:56           ` Richard Stallman
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Richard Stallman @ 2017-04-27 23:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Perry E. Metzger; +Cc: emacs-devel

[[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider    ]]]
[[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies,     ]]]
[[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

  > > I am urging the GCC developers to work on implementing the language
  > > server.

  > I would then suggest that Language Server Protocol support be
  > integrated into Emacs (as opposed to being available in ELPA or what
  > have you).

I will tell this list if I convince them.
So far, they are unconvinced.

-- 
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation (gnu.org, fsf.org)
Internet Hall-of-Famer (internethalloffame.org)
Skype: No way! See stallman.org/skype.html.




^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
@ 2018-08-30 15:51 Sébastien Gendre
  2018-08-30 15:58 ` Tom Tromey
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Sébastien Gendre @ 2018-08-30 15:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tom, emacs-devel

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 58 bytes --]

Is there any news about LSP in Emacs core?




Séb

[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 833 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2018-08-30 15:51 Sébastien Gendre
@ 2018-08-30 15:58 ` Tom Tromey
  2018-08-31  4:12   ` Jay Kamat
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 29+ messages in thread
From: Tom Tromey @ 2018-08-30 15:58 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Sébastien Gendre; +Cc: tom, emacs-devel

>>>>> "Sébastien" == Sébastien Gendre <seb@k-7.ch> writes:

Sébastien> Is there any news about LSP in Emacs core?

eglot is in GNU ELPA.  I'd like to see it in core but maybe this is
close enough.

Tom



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

* Re: Language Servers and Emacs
  2018-08-30 15:58 ` Tom Tromey
@ 2018-08-31  4:12   ` Jay Kamat
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 29+ messages in thread
From: Jay Kamat @ 2018-08-31  4:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Tom Tromey; +Cc: Sébastien Gendre, emacs-devel


Especially because elglot/lsp require setup from various language backends,
and can't "just work" at the moment, I don't think it's a good idea to have
them in Emacs core. Not to mention that both projects are evolving very
quickly and would suffer from being frozen in a stable version of Emacs.

It is great to have Elgot in the ELPA though!

Tom Tromey writes:

>>>>>> "Sébastien" == Sébastien Gendre <seb@k-7.ch> writes:
>
> Sébastien> Is there any news about LSP in Emacs core?
>
> eglot is in GNU ELPA.  I'd like to see it in core but maybe this is
> close enough.
>
> Tom



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 29+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2018-08-31  4:12 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 29+ messages (download: mbox.gz follow: Atom feed
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2017-04-11 16:28 Language Servers and Emacs Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-11 16:36 ` Philippe Vaucher
2017-04-11 16:44   ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-11 19:32   ` Evgeniy Dushistov
2017-04-11 18:32 ` Eli Zaretskii
2017-04-12  7:39 ` Helmut Eller
2017-04-12 12:59   ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-25 12:17     ` Phillip Lord
2017-04-25 23:06       ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2017-04-26  2:00         ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-26 11:15           ` Phillip Lord
2017-04-26 12:14             ` Helmut Eller
2017-04-26 13:24             ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-26 15:23               ` Phillip Lord
2017-04-26 17:14       ` Richard Stallman
2017-04-27 18:15         ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-27 23:56           ` Richard Stallman
2017-04-12  9:03 ` Vibhav Pant
2017-04-12 13:07   ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-13  6:19     ` Vibhav Pant
2017-04-14  9:06       ` Lele Gaifax
2017-04-13 13:58 ` Richard Stallman
2017-04-20 10:52 ` Philipp Stephani
2017-04-21  2:08   ` Richard Stallman
2017-04-21 12:42     ` Perry E. Metzger
2017-04-21  3:44   ` Tom Tromey
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-08-30 15:51 Sébastien Gendre
2018-08-30 15:58 ` Tom Tromey
2018-08-31  4:12   ` Jay Kamat

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