zls: A Zig repository from novakne

Zig Language Server, or zls, is a language server for Zig. The Zig wiki states that "The Zig community is decentralized" and "There is no concept of 'official' or 'unofficial'", so instead of calling zls unofficial, and I'm going to call it a cool option, one of many.

Installation
- Build Options
- Configuration Options
Usage
- VSCode
- Sublime Text
- Kate
- Neovim/Vim8
- Emacs
- Doom Emacs
Related Projects
License

Installation

Installation starts with downloading an official release from the Releases page. Up to date builds from master branch are also available in the latest successful CI run, contained in the builds artifact.

See Downloading and Building ZLS on the Wiki, or the page about using ZLS with Visual Studio Code for a guide to help get zls running in your editor.

Installing binaries

MacOS

You can install the latest release into $HOME/zls using e.g.:

brew install xz
mkdir $HOME/zls && cd $HOME/zls && curl -L https://github.com/zigtools/zls/releases/download/0.9.0/x86_64-macos.tar.xz | tar -xJ --strip-components=1 -C .

Linux

You can install the latest release into $HOME/zls using e.g.:

sudo apt install xz-utils
mkdir $HOME/zls && cd $HOME/zls && curl -L https://github.com/zigtools/zls/releases/download/0.9.0/x86_64-linux.tar.xz | tar -xJ --strip-components=1 -C .

From Source

Building zls is very easy. You will need a build of Zig master to build zls.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/zigtools/zls
cd zls
zig build -Drelease-safe
./zig-out/bin/zls config # Configure ZLS

For detailed building instructions, see the Wiki page about Cloning With Git.

Build Options

Option	Type	Default Value	What it Does
`-Ddata_version`	`string` (master, 0.7.0 or 0.7.1)	master	The data file version. This selects the files in the `src/data` folder that correspond to the Zig version being served.

Updating Data Files

There is a generate-data.py in the src/data folder, run this file to update data files. It writes to stdout and you can redirect output to a zig file like master.zig. By default it generates data file for master, but can be configured to generate for a different version by modifying the zig_version variable. Files generated by this tool contains formatting information.

There is also a generate-data.js in the src/data folder, you'll need to run this inside a Chrome DevTools console and copy the output. Files generated by this tool does not contain formatting information.

Configuration Options

You can configure zls by running zls config or manually creating your own zls.json configuration file. zls will look for a zls.json configuration file in multiple locations with the following priority:

In the local configuration folder of your OS (as provided by known-folders)
In the global configuration folder of your OS (as provided by known-folders)

The following options are currently available.

Option	Type	Default value	What it Does
`enable_snippets`	`bool`	`false`	Enables snippet completions when the client also supports them.
`zig_lib_path`	`?[]const u8`	`null`	zig library path, e.g. `/path/to/zig/lib/zig`, used to analyze std library imports.
`zig_exe_path`	`?[]const u8`	`null`	zig executable path, e.g. `/path/to/zig/zig`, used to run the custom build runner. If `null`, zig is looked up in `PATH`. Will be used to infer the zig standard library path if none is provided.
`warn_style`	`bool`	`false`	Enables warnings for style guideline mismatches
`build_runner_path`	`?[]const u8`	`null`	Path to the build_runner.zig file provided by zls. `null` is equivalent to `${executable_directory}/build_runner.zig`
`build_runner_cache_path`	`?[]const u8`	`null`	Path to a directroy that will be used as zig's cache when running `zig run build_runner.zig ...`. `null` is equivalent to `${KnownFloders.Cache}/zls`
`enable_semantic_tokens`	`bool`	`true`	Enables semantic token support when the client also supports it.
`operator_completions`	`bool`	`true`	Enables `*` and `?` operators in completion lists.
`skip_std_references`	`bool`	`false`	When true, skips searching for references in std. Improves lookup speed for functions in user's code. Renaming and go-to-definition will continue to work as is.

Features

zls supports most language features, including simple type function support, usingnamespace, payload capture type resolution, custom packages and others. Notable language features that are not currently implemented include @cImport as well as most forms of compile time evaluation.

The following LSP features are supported:

Completions
Hover
Goto definition/declaration
Document symbols
Find references
Rename symbol
Formatting using zig fmt
Semantic token highlighting (LSP 3.16 proposed feature, implemented by a few clients including VSCode, kak and emacs lsp-mode)

You can install zls using the instuctions for your text editor below:

VSCode

Install the zls-vscode extension from here and provide a path to the build zls executable.

Sublime Text

Install the LSP package from here or via Package Control.
Add this snippet to LSP's user settings:

For Sublime Text 3:

{
    "clients": {
        "zig": {
            "command": ["zls"],
            "enabled": true,
            "languageId": "zig",
            "scopes": ["source.zig"],
            "syntaxes": ["Packages/Zig Language/Syntaxes/Zig.tmLanguage"]
        }
    }
}

For Sublime Text 4:

{
    "clients": {
        "zig": {
            "command": ["zls"],
            "enabled": true,
            "selector": "source.zig"
        }
    }
}

Kate

Enable LSP client plugin in Kate settings.
Add this snippet to LSP client's user settings (e.g. /$HOME/.config/kate/lspclient) (or paste it in LSP client's GUI settings)

{
    "servers": {
        "zig": {
            "command": ["zls"],
            "url": "https://github.com/zigtools/zls",
            "highlightingModeRegex": "^Zig$"
        }
    }
}

Neovim/Vim8

CoC

Install the CoC engine from here.
Issue :CocConfig from within your Vim editor, and the following snippet:

{
   "languageserver": {
       "zls" : {
           "command": "command_or_path_to_zls",
           "filetypes": ["zig"]
       }
   }
}

YouCompleteMe

Install YouCompleteMeFrom here.
Add these lines to your vimrc:

"ensure zig is a recognized filetype
autocmd BufNewFile,BufRead *.zig set filetype=zig

let g:ycm_language_server =
  \ [
  \{
  \     'name': 'zls',
  \     'filetypes': [ 'zig' ],
  \     'cmdline': [ '/path/to/zls_executable' ]
  \    }
  \ ]

nvim-lspconfig

Requires Nvim 0.5 (HEAD)!

Install nvim-lspconfig from here.
Install zig.vim from here.

nvim-lspconfig already ships a configuration for zls. A simple init.vim might look like this:

call plug#begin('~/.config/nvim/plugged')
Plug 'neovim/nvim-lspconfig'
Plug 'nvim-lua/completion-nvim'
Plug 'ziglang/zig.vim'
call plug#end()

:lua << EOF
    local lspconfig = require('lspconfig')

    local on_attach = function(_, bufnr)
        vim.api.nvim_buf_set_option(bufnr, 'omnifunc', 'v:lua.vim.lsp.omnifunc')
        require('completion').on_attach()
    end

    local servers = {'zls'}
    for _, lsp in ipairs(servers) do
        lspconfig[lsp].setup {
            on_attach = on_attach,
        }
    end
EOF

" Set completeopt to have a better completion experience
set completeopt=menuone,noinsert,noselect

" Enable completions as you type
let g:completion_enable_auto_popup = 1

LanguageClient-neovim

Install the LanguageClient-neovim from here
Edit your neovim configuration and add zls for zig filetypes:

let g:LanguageClient_serverCommands = {
       \ 'zig': ['~/code/zls/zig-out/bin/zls'],
       \ }

Emacs

Install lsp-mode from melpa
zig mode is also useful

;; Setup lsp-mode as desired.
;; See https://emacs-lsp.github.io/lsp-mode/page/installation/ for more information.
(require 'lsp-mode)

;; Either place zls in your PATH or add the following:
(setq lsp-zig-zls-executable "<path to zls>")

Doom Emacs

Enable the lsp module
Install the zig-mode package (add (package! zig-mode) to your packages.el file
Add the following to your config.el:

(use-package! zig-mode
  :hook ((zig-mode . lsp-deferred))
  :custom (zig-format-on-save nil)
  :config
  (after! lsp-mode
    (add-to-list 'lsp-language-id-configuration '(zig-mode . "zig"))
    (lsp-register-client
      (make-lsp-client
        :new-connection (lsp-stdio-connection "<path to zls>")
        :major-modes '(zig-mode)
        :server-id 'zls))))

Related Projects

sublime-zig-language by @prime31
- Supports basic language features
- Uses data provided by src/data to perform builtin autocompletion
zig-lsp by @xackus
- Inspiration for zls
known-folders by @ziglibs
- Provides API to access known folders on Linux, Windows and Mac OS

License

MIT

novakne/zls

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