I recently wrote about yet another lisp I'd been having fun with.
Over the past couple of years I've played with a few toy scripting languages, or random interpreters, and this time I figured I'd do something beyond the minimum, by implementing the Language Server Protocol.
In brief the language server protocol (LSP) is designed to abstract functionality that might be provided by an editor, or IDE, into a small "language server". If the language-server knows how to jump to definitions, provide completion, etc, etc, then the editor doesn't need to implement those things for NN different languages - it just needs to launch and communicate with something that does know how to do the job.
Anyway LSP? LISP? Only one letter different, so that's practically enough reason to have a stab at it.
Thankfully I found a beautiful library that implements a simple framework allowing the easy implementation of a golang-based LSP-serverÖ
Using that I quickly hacked up a server that can provide:
- Overview of all standard-library functions, on hover.
- Completion of all standard-library functions.
I've tested this in both GNU Emacs and Neovim, so that means I'm happy I support all editors! (More seriously if it works in two then that probably means that the LSP stuff should work elsewhere too.)
Here's what the "help on hover" looks like, within Emacs:
Vim looks similar but you have to press K to see the wee popup. Still
kinda cute, and was a good experiment.