Hi- That pike language server is new in the last week, and the first line in the readme is "This project was 100% coded by AI agents…” so it’s probably good to set expectations accordingly.
Trying to keep an open mind, I followed the instructions, which built a VSIX file that I was able to load into VSCode. However, the VSCode extension doesn’t start up due to some node errors. Those show up in the Output -> Extension Host window. I don’t know where to begin to fix that. I /was/ able to use the LSP4J plugin in my JetBrains IDE to set up a mapping between *.pike, *.pmod and the language server. What I did: cd pike-lsp npm install -g pnpm pnpm install pnpm build Then in the language server configuration, I put the following command in the spot in the configuration: node --inspect /path/to/pike-lsp/packages/pike-language-server/src/server.js --stdio You can also run that command yourself and it should spit out some json to let you know it’s running. There are other command line options to use sockets, etc. It sort of works, if you type in invalid code, it highlights that and gives (not terribly helpful) descriptions of the problem. This might be a common problem with all lsp, but you get the red underline almost immediately, even though you’re still typing… that seems like it would get frustrating pretty quickly. It can sort of do completion suggestions. It could be quite interesting if it worked a bit better, and maybe is a worthwhile starting point for something more, just maybe? Years ago I wrote an eclipse plugin that had a pike parser written in Java. Based on the parsing, it could highlight syntax errors and generated code folding and structure mapping. It was reasonably good but there were esoteric bits of pike that the grammar choked on. What might be interesting for you is the debug adapter protocol implementation that I didn’t get around to committing. That’s the debugging equivalent of LSP. It wasn’t complete but could be genuinely useful. If folks are interested I could make an effort to start the process of getting it merged into the main Pike repo. Some details: https://wiki.gotpike.org/PikeDevel/PikeDebugger Also, an older page that I think is probably still valid: https://wiki.gotpike.org/PikeTools There are a number of editors/ides that support TextMate plugins, so it should be possible to use the TextMate bundle to add some light language integration to a number of editors. I also had a config file for exuberant-ctags at one point that did structure generation, and there are a number of plugins that support that. I don’t exactly recall if I wrote that or if it came from someone else. Perhaps someone here could help, if that was of interest. Ultimately, I guess it sort of depends on what features you need… I find the code navigation features most helpful. There have been times when a proper debugger would have been a huge help (hence my efforts to build one). Maybe the syntax highlighting stuff could be useful but pike code compiles so quickly, it’s not a huge time saver for me. Hope this helps! > On Jan 12, 2026, at 3:17 PM, Duke Normandin <[email protected]> wrote: > > I'm trying to install: > > https://github.com/TheSmuks/pike-lsp > > on my Linux box to see if it will work with the `helix' editor. > > Not having much success with `npm' and `pnpm'. > > Anybody using this lsp? Any others available? Any other suggestions for a > sweet > Pike hacking workflow? TIA ... > -- > Duke >
