debug-adapter-protocol VS nvim-dap

> There's a strange dance of IDEs coming and going, with their idiosyncracies and partial plugins.

The Language Server Protocol [1] is the best thing to happen to text editors. Any editor that speaks it gets IDE features. Now if only they'd adopt the Debug Adapter Protocol [2]...

[1] https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/

[2] https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

Wonder if they've got support for Debug Adapter Protocol? https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/

> Debuggers need to do more things

It's true that coming up with an interface for an abstract debugger is harder, but it's not impossible. Microsoft create Debug Adapter Protocol (https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol/), which is conceptually similar for LSP. It's not perfect, but covers most basic operations pretty well, while leaving to the debugger to deal with the implementation details.

Most languages also include support for the Debug Adapter Protocol, and Haskell is no exception, so if you are so inclined, you can hook up your favorite editor/IDE and go to town.

They're working on the Debug Adapter Protocol but it doesn't have critical mass/adoption yet. And yeah, I end up having a fair share of dbg!(foo). It's not so bad since dbg!() also returns its value, so you don't have to mess with your code too much.

TL;DR: What would it take to implement a Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP)-based step debugger?

RDP is the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol that was in use for decades before VSCode; VSCode's own remoting doesn't use it.

I'd say that, in addition to LSP, the other big thing that came out of VSCode is DAP: https://microsoft.github.io/debug-adapter-protocol.

The most important part is the JDT Languag Server, it will give you the Java tooling for writing code. I think it has DAP support as well, so with a DAP client like nvim-dap you should be able to debug as well.

There are DAP extensions for both Vim (e.g. https://github.com/puremourning/vimspector) and NeoVim (https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap). I can't speak as to the experience in detail (I think I briefly played with nvim-dap a year or two ago), but I suspect that for most it will be good enough.

https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap/issues/1062 https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap/issues/737

Also, you can set up debugger integration with https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap .

You could use nvim-dap with nvim-dap-python.

I'd suggest starting with a Neovim distro that makes things work for you and as you get familiar you can transition to a more custom configuration as you see fit. If you want to do it by yourself then the most popular plugin for debugging in Neovim is nvim-dap and there is also an extension for Python to give you a more ready to go config instead of doing it yourself. You should read the docs of those 2 to see how you should customize accordingly your configuration.

(neovim only) nvim-dap

https://github.com/mfussenegger/nvim-dap + https://github.com/theHamsta/nvim-dap-virtual-text should be able to do it, I think?

If you want to debug types in TypeScript, you could use marilari88/twoslash-queries.nvim. If you would like to debug TypeScript/JavaScript code, then you need mfussenegger/nvim-dap, you could read this article: Debugging using DAP to understand how to set up it.