nimlsp VS nimscripter

Downloading https://github.com/PMunch/nimlsp using git

Cloning into '.'... From https://github.com/pmunch/nimlsp * tag v0.4.4 -> FETCH_HEAD + nimble build -y --localdeps Warning: Using project local deps mode Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Prompt: No local packages.json found, download it from internet? -> [forced yes] Downloading Official package list Success Package list downloaded. Installing jsonschema@>= 0.2.1 Downloading https://github.com/PMunch/jsonschema using git Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Installing ast_pattern_matching@any version Downloading https://github.com/nim-lang/ast-pattern-matching using git Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Installing [email protected] Success: ast_pattern_matching installed successfully. Installing [email protected] Success: jsonschema installed successfully. Installing asynctools@>= 0.1.1 Downloading https://github.com/cheatfate/asynctools using git Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Installing [email protected] Success: asynctools installed successfully. Building nimlsp/nimlsp_debug using c backend [1m/home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/suggestlib.nim(3, 18) [0m[31mError: [0mcannot open file: nimsuggest/nimsuggest[36m[0m[0m Tip: 30 messages have been suppressed, use --verbose to show them. Error: Build failed for package: nimlsp ... Execution failed with exit code 1 ... Command: /usr/bin/nim c --colors:on --noNimblePath -d:NimblePkgVersion=0.4.4 --path:/home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/nimbledeps/pkgs/ast_pattern_matching-1.0.0 --path:/home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/nimbledeps/pkgs/jsonschema-0.2.1 --path:/home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/nimbledeps/pkgs/asynctools-0.1.1 --hints:off -o:/home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/nimlsp_debug /home/terrior/.local/share/nvim/mason/.packages/nimlsp/src/nimlsp_debug.nim spawn: bash failed with exit code 1 and signal 0.

nimlangserver is an implementation of Language Server Protocol with the goal to make nim IDE experience more mature. The main difference between nimlangserver and the existing nimlsp is that nimlangserver runs nimsuggest in a separate process and that nimlangserver is using a newly introduced version of nimsuggest v3(see bellow). nimlangserver is currently integrated in VScode via vscode-nim and in Emacs via lsp-mode but adding integraion with other editors should be trivial.

Downloading https://github.com/PMunch/nimlsp using gitTVerifying dependencies for [email protected]: Dependency on jsonschema@>= 0.2.1 already satisfiedVerifying dependencies for [email protected]: Dependency on ast_pattern_matching@any version already satisfiedVerifying dependencies for [email protected]: Dependency on asynctools@any version already satisfiedVerifying dependencies for [email protected] [email protected] nimlsp/nimlsp using c backend/tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/baseprotocol.nim(2, 8) Warning: imported and not used: 'logger' [UnusedImport]/tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/suggestlib.nim(11, 8) template/generic instantiation of `mImport` from here/tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/suggestlib.nim(7, 14) Error: cannot open file: /usr/nimsuggest/nimsuggest.nimPrompt: Build failed for '[email protected]', would you like to try installing 'nimlsp@#head' (latest unstable)? [y/N]Answer: NTip: 10 messages have been suppressed, use --verbose to show them.Error: Aborting installation due to build failureimlsp using gitT Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Info: Dependency on jsonschema@>= 0.2.1 already satisfied Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Info: Dependency on ast_pattern_matching@any version already satisfied Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Info: Dependency on asynctools@any version already satisfied Verifying dependencies for [email protected] Installing [email protected] Building nimlsp/nimlsp using c backend /tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/baseprotocol.nim(2, 8) Warning: imported and not used: 'logger' [UnusedImport] /tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/suggestlib.nim(11, 8) template/generic instantiation of `mImport` from here /tmp/nimble_153465/githubcom_PMunchnimlsp/src/nimlsppkg/suggestlib.nim(7, 14) Error: cannot open file: /usr/nimsuggest/nimsuggest.nim Prompt: Build failed for '[email protected]', would you like to try installing 'nimlsp@#head' (latest unstable)? [y/N] Answer: N Tip: 10 messages have been suppressed, use --verbose to show them. Error: Aborting installation due to build failure

> What does this mean? There's a runtime VM or compile time VM?

Compile time VM. It's used to run macros / templates / concepts. You can also run most code at compile time in a `static` block except for stuff that needs C calls. You can also compile the VM into a program and use it as a runtime VM (see https://github.com/beef331/nimscripter) which I do in my GUI lib. NIR should enable the compile time VM to run faster too, and possibly use JIT'ed code.

Checkout Nim! It does much of what you describe and its great. The core language is fairly small (not quite lua simple but probably ML comparable). It compiles fast enough that a Nim repl like `inim` is useable to check features and for basic maths, though it requires a C compiler, but TCC [4] works perfectly. Essentially Nim + tcc is pretty close to your description, IMHO. Though I'm not sure TCC supports non-x86 targets.

I've never used it but Nim does support some hot reloading as well [3]. It also has a real VM if you want to run user scripts and has a nice library for it [1]. Its not quite Lua flexible but for a generally compiled language its impressive.

Recently I made a wrapper to embed access to the Nim compilers macros at runtime [2]. It took 3-4 hours probably and still compiles in 10s of seconds despite building in a fair bit of the compiler! It was useful for making a code generator for a serializer format. Though I'm not sure its small enough to live on even beefy m4/m7 microcontrollers. Though I'm tempted to try.

1: https://github.com/beef331/nimscripter