nvim-lspconfig VS null-ls.nvim

Compare nvim-lspconfig vs null-ls.nvim and see what are their differences.

null-ls.nvim

Use Neovim as a language server to inject LSP diagnostics, code actions, and more via Lua. (by jose-elias-alvarez)
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nvim-lspconfig null-ls.nvim
523 164
9,481 3,554
4.0% -
9.7 0.0
5 days ago 9 months ago
Lua Lua
Apache License 2.0 GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

nvim-lspconfig

Posts with mentions or reviews of nvim-lspconfig. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-02-03.
  • JetBrains' unremovable AI assistant meets irresistible outcry
    5 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Feb 2024
    I suggest looking for blog posts about this, you're gunnuh wanna pick out a plugin manager and stuff. It's kind of like a package manager for neovim. You can install everything manually but usually you manually install a plugin manager and it gives you commands to manage the rest of your plugins.

    These two plugins are the bare minimum in my view.

    https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter

    Treesitter gives you much better syntax highlighting based on a parser for a given language.

    https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig

    This plugin helps you connect to a given language LSP quickly with sensible defaults. You more or less pick your language from here and copy paste a snippet, and then install the relevant LSP:

    https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/doc/ser...

    For Python you'll want pylsp. For JavaScript it will depend on what frontend framework you're using, I probably can't help you there.

    pylsp itself takes some plugins and you'll probably want them. https://github.com/python-lsp/python-lsp-server

    Best of luck! Happy hacking.

  • Neovide – a simple, no-nonsense, cross-platform GUI for Neovim
    17 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Jan 2024
    Adding language support it neovim isn't very difficult once you're setup. I use nvim-lspconfig[1] and just about any language you could need is documented[2]. But like others have mentioned there are batteries included distributions of neovim if that's your cup of tea.

    [1]: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/

    [2]: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/doc/ser...

  • A guide on Neovim's LSP client
    7 projects | dev.to | 13 Jan 2024
    If we can't find the basic usage in the documentation we can go to nvim-lspconfig's github repository. In there we look for a folder called server_configurations, this contains configuration files for a bunch of language servers.
  • Do I need NeoVIM?
    11 projects | /r/neovim | 7 Dec 2023
    https://github.com/hrsh7th/nvim-cmp This is an autocompletion engine https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter This allows NeoVim to install parsing scripts so NeoVim can do things like code highlighting. https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim Not strictly necessary, but allows you to access a repo of LSP, install them, and configure them for without you actively messing about in config files. https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig Also not strictly necessary, but vastly simplifies LSP setup. https://github.com/williamboman/mason-lspconfig.nvim This lets the above two plugins talk to each other more easily.
  • cpp setting problem
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 6 Dec 2023
    This specific issue talks about fixing clangd for that error: https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/issues/2184. The issue is ongoing for ccls AFAIK but for clangd, this has been discussed and fixed in the past already.
  • Need help to set up the pbkit language server
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 21 Sep 2023
    I am trying to set up the pbkit language server for protobuf files. Since it is not part of the nvim-lspconfig repo's server configurations, I have to figure the way out myself. It doesn't seem to be too difficult, as I can start from the bufls configuration there. The following is what I have at the moment:
  • Option omnifunc is not set
    1 project | /r/neovim | 31 Aug 2023
    I have configured neovim with lspconfig and mason. Added the suggested configuration of the lsp config(https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig) to ~/.config/nvim/after/plugin/lsp.lua Then I installed via mason the following language servers:
  • Using nvim-lint as a null-ls alternative for linters
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 14 Aug 2023
    Personally, i think nvim-lint is the best alternative currently, specially so because it has no dependencies on external binaries. This guide assumes you already have your LSP set up with nvim-lspconfig (or an alternative like lsp-zero). You should also have an way to install the linters you are gonna need, i highly recommend Mason with mason-lspconfig.
  • The Future of the Vim Project
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Aug 2023
    Basically neovim can act as a client to a variety of different language servers (https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig/blob/master/doc/ser...) which give neovim IDE capabilities. This can be done in original Vim also but requires external plugins which can be a pain to compile and install. Neovim has it built in.
  • SQL LSP dialect
    2 projects | /r/neovim | 4 Aug 2023
    I'm struggling to get [sqlls](https://github.com/joe-re/sql-language-server) with [nvim-lspconfig](https://github.com/neovim/nvim-lspconfig) to use Postgres syntax.

null-ls.nvim

Posts with mentions or reviews of null-ls.nvim. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-12-06.
  • cpp setting problem
    4 projects | /r/neovim | 6 Dec 2023
  • Being a bash developer in the 21st century
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 22 Sep 2023
    you can use nvim then, it has shellcheck for diagnostics and formatting, like in vscode :)

    here the link to the config: https://github.com/jose-elias-alvarez/null-ls.nvim/blob/main...

  • Linting/formatting and LSP
    1 project | /r/neovim | 8 Sep 2023
    I use a lot of different languages generally and I'm running into issues around formatting. Is there any standard way to use LSP formatting by default and otherwise fallback to specific linter/formatting programs? I believe null-ls is the normal way of dealing with this, but since it's been archived, I'd rather not rely on it.
  • How to setup efm-langserver for pint formatter?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 13 Jul 2023
    I've been using pint for formatting php files with null-ls.nvim. Few days ago null-ls.nvim has announced that the plugin will be archived in few months so I started migrating all my formatters and linter from null-ls to efm-langserver. I got other things such as prettier, black, isort, mypy, etc. working but can't get pint to work with php files: If I run pint via efm-langserver, everything is deleted from the buffer, and the saved file is formatted separately. How do I setup efm-langserver correctly to work with pint? Below is my config.yml for pint currently. yaml tools: pint: &pint format-command: "pint --no-interaction --quiet ${INPUT}" format-stdin: false languages: php: - <<: *pint Thank you.
  • Archiving Null-Ls
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Jul 2023
  • null-ls will be archived
    1 project | /r/ThePrimeagenReact | 10 Jul 2023
    14 projects | /r/neovim | 9 Jul 2023
  • Why is nobody using CoC anymore?
    3 projects | /r/neovim | 3 Jul 2023
    Because null-ls.nvim & mason.nvim together do everything I wanted CoC for
  • Your favourite Neovim plugins?
    42 projects | /r/neovim | 21 Jun 2023
  • How can I get yapf, black, and other formatters working with pylsp?
    1 project | /r/neovim | 19 Jun 2023
    There is a good answer. I think you know lua and neovim config enough to pick things that you need. If you need a short answer, null-ls is the way.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing nvim-lspconfig and null-ls.nvim you can also consider the following projects:

coc.nvim - Nodejs extension host for vim & neovim, load extensions like VSCode and host language servers.

formatter.nvim

nvim-lsp-installer - Further development has moved to https://github.com/williamboman/mason.nvim!

neoformat - :sparkles: A (Neo)vim plugin for formatting code.

nvim-jdtls - Extensions for the built-in LSP support in Neovim for eclipse.jdt.ls

StyLua - An opinionated Lua code formatter

coc - Chroniques Oubliées Contemporain

nvim-lint - An asynchronous linter plugin for Neovim complementary to the built-in Language Server Protocol support.

ale - Check syntax in Vim/Neovim asynchronously and fix files, with Language Server Protocol (LSP) support

efm-langserver - General purpose Language Server

clangd - clangd language server

lsp-zero.nvim - A starting point to setup some lsp related features in neovim.