neodev.nvim VS tl

Also the vim API signature is not available using the fennel-language-server In lua you can install neodev and you will get some nice lsp suggestions with the vim API, this is sadly not possible in fennel right now

Other than the root_dir problem, I think the lsp server might have been attached but configuration would be different. For instance, if one is using folke's neodev for API completion (https://github.com/folke/neodev.nvim/issues/158) it would work differently for nvim config files and other lua workspaces.

Try to debug what happens on exit, maybe https://neovim.io/doc/user/starting.html#-V works. Regarding nvim-cmp being slow, do you have https://github.com/folke/neodev.nvim installed? If yes, try removing it and checking if it's an issue. It's been slowing down my completion for a while until I pinpointed the issue (and it was slowing it down always, not just when editing lua code).

You can try neodev.nvim. It's really great especially if you're planning for plugin development.

Are you using https://github.com/folke/neodev.nvim ?

Okay i figured it out myself https://github.com/folke/neodev.nvim provides lua files with the required type signatures.

it's based off MIR, does it have something to do with https://mlir.llvm.org/ ?

for typed lua, there is another effort https://github.com/teal-language/tl in addition to the mentioned typescript approach: https://github.com/andremm/typedlua

I had the pleasure of working with Lua 5.1 back in the late noughties. For me it's replaced Tcl whenever I want something I can configure above a C library. At the time I used it I found it quite nice but I'll also not forget the hours I wasted tracking down nil table corruptions which could have easily been caught by a type checker.

I had some hope that Luau https://luau-lang.org or Teal https://github.com/teal-language/tl would make things better but with the following example

    function foo(x: number): string

I wonder why the author doesn't use Teal [0] - a typed dialect of lua.

[O] https://github.com/teal-language/tl

Check out Teal

There is already https://github.com/teal-language/tl, which is typed Lua. I think fennel exists to serve a different niche-- personally I use it not for any type features; I just like the syntax better, and others may find certain features like the macro system useful.

There's also some languages made to compile straight to Lua: - MoonScript is the most popular Lua wrapper - it's built to be more Python-like, featuring indentation-based scopes, function calls without parentheses, lambda syntax, list comprehension, and much more. - Yuescript is a modern update to MoonScript that adds more features (I haven't used it myself, so I'm not entirely sure exactly how it differs from MS). - Teal is a version of Lua that adds static typing for better code standards.

Terra and Nelua are both very different in goals than Teal. Teal is literally gradual types integrated into Lua keeping as many of Lua's idioms as possible (to a fault[1]). Terra and Nelua are both very metaprogrammable systems programming languages. Nelua's goals are primarily to soften C's rough edges, comparable to something like Nim.

There's another one you missed in Pallene[2]. But again, it's goal was to optimize the stack sharing involved in using the C API. It also adds types though and maintains Lua idioms as much as possible.

[1]: https://github.com/teal-language/tl/discussions/339

[2]: https://github.com/pallene-lang/pallene