vscode-client

The vscode-client extension for Visual Studio Code helps you develop and debug language servers. It lets you run multiple language servers at once with minimal extra configuration per language.

Using this extension

Follow the Getting Started instructions for this project
Run npm install.
Run npm run vscode to start a new VSCode instance. Use npm run vscode -- /path/to/mydir to open the editor to a specific directory.
Open a .go file and hover over text to start using the Go language server.

To view a language server's stderr output in VSCode, select View → Output. To debug further, see the "Hacking on this extension" section below.

After updating the binary for a language server (during development or after an upgrade), just kill the process (e.g., killall langserver-go). VSCode will automatically restart and reconnect to the language server process.

Note for those who use VSCode as their primary editor: Because this extension's functionality conflicts with other VSCode extensions (e.g., showing Go hover information), the npm run vscode script launches an separate instance of VSCode and stores its config in ../.vscode-dev. It will still show your existing extensions in the panel (which seems to be a VSCode bug), but they won't be activated.

Adding a language server

Register your language server at the bottom of extension.ts.

Hacking on this extension

Run npm install in this directory (vscode-client).
Open this directory by itself in Visual Studio Code.
Hit F5 to open a new VSCode instance in a debugger running this extension. (This is equivalent to going to the Debug pane on the left and running the "Launch Extension" task.)

See the Node.js example language server tutorial under "To test the language server" for more information.