25 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
25 lines
2 KiB
Markdown
|
---
|
||
|
|
title: "Kate Language Server Protocol Client"
|
||
|
|
date: 2019-04-28T20:36:00+02:00
|
||
|
|
draft: false
|
||
|
|
categories: [kde, kate, development]
|
||
|
|
tags: [kde, kate]
|
||
|
|
---
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
The [Language Server Protocol (LSP)](https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/overview) allows the integration of stuff like code completion, jump to definition, symbol search and more into an application without manual re-implementation for each language one wants to support.
|
||
|
|
LSP doesn't fully allow an integration like [KDevelop](https://www.kdevelop.org) or Qt Creator do with the [libclang](https://clang.llvm.org/docs/Tooling.html) based tooling aimed for C/C++ but on the other side offers the possibility to interface with [plenty of languages](https://langserver.org/#implementations-server) without a large effort on the client side.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
If one takes a look at some current [LSP clients list](https://langserver.org/#implementations-client), a lot of editors and IDEs have joined the LSP family in the last years.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
In the past I was always scared away to start implementing this in Kate, as no readily available library was around to do the low-level work for the client.
|
||
|
|
Whereas you get some reference stuff for the JSON based protocol for JavaScript and such, for Qt nothing was around.
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Fortunately Qt Creator started to implement an LSP client beginning with [the 4.8 release](https://blog.qt.io/blog/2018/12/06/qt-creator-4-8-0-released/).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
Based on this code, I started now to get this into the Kate project plugin.
|
||
|
|
At the moment not much more has happened then some initial import of the Qt Creator LSP infrastructure code into the [Kate lsp branch](https://cgit.kde.org/kate.git/log/?h=lsp).
|
||
|
|
|
||
|
|
If I get this working (help is welcome!), any improvements will be submitted back to the Qt Creator implementation.
|
||
|
|
If it really starts to work well in Kate, one might think about some better code sharing in the long term.
|
||
|
|
But before such plans, first at least some basic things must work for some initial language server like [clangd](https://clang.llvm.org/extra/clangd/).
|