rbs_parser VS solargraph

We discovered a bug in `srb init` for Ruby 3.1 recently that a teammate of mine is working on fixing at the moment. It's likely that if you tried again in a few days it'll have been fixed. Sorry about that, totally agree that the out-of-box experience should just work.

I wrote up an FAQ about the state of Ruby 3 and RBS here:

https://sorbet.org/docs/faq#when-ruby-3-gets-types-what-will...

The tl;dr is that RBI files (not RBS files) will probably always be the preferred way to declare types for third party code (because it will always support exactly the same set of features that Sorbet does). We have some people in the community look into teaching Sorbet to read the RBS format, but the existing parsers for RBS files are written in Ruby and are very slow, and there are some ambiguities in the spec that make writing a third party parser that compiles to native code tricky. You can see an attempt to write a fast RBS parser in C++ here[1], but again given that RBI files do everything we need them to right now and we have other features people are asking us for, we haven't prioritized RBS support incredibly highly.

Sorbet works completely fine without RBS files!

[1] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

This article might help clear some things up:

https://sorbet.org/blog/2020/07/30/ruby-3-rbs-sorbet

tl;dr:

- RBS files are what Ruby 3 uses to describe types in separate files

- RBI files are what Sorbet uses to describe types in separate files

- Sorbet invented its RBI file syntax before RBS files existed. RBI files use the same syntax for types and signatures as in type annotations that live inside `*.rb` source code with Sorbet.

- We've been meaning to add support to Sorbet to consume both RBI files and RBS files, but we haven't had a chance to get around to it.

If someone beat us to it and implemented support for RBS files in Sorbet that would be amazing! Shopify took an early stab at implementing an RBS parser in C++ for performance[1], but I'm not sure what the status of it is today.

[1] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

(disclaimer: I work on the Sorbet team)

I think I understand GP's motivation: RBI files and RBS files are two different formats, and as a user of the language, people tend to want to use the officially blessed solution the language provides.

In case you weren't aware, parlour[1] is a popular open source project for working with RBI files. I believe it supports transparently converting between RBI files (Sorbet) and RBS files (Ruby 3).

There is also rbs_parser[2], a C++ parser for RBS files to convert them to RBI files, written by Shopify, a major user of Sorbet.

Stepping back: I haven't personally read many complaints from Sorbet users describing how the current state of RBI/RBS interop gets in the way of what they can actually do with Sorbet. Almost all the feature requests we get about Sorbet (both inside Stripe and outside) are for fixing bugs or implementing new language-level features. RBI files as implemented seem to work.

Sorbet already has an extensive set of RBI files covering the Ruby standard library (at least as good or better to my knowledge than any existing repository of types for RBS files), and there are plentiful tools for working with RBI files, listed here.[3]

If lack of first-party RBS support in Sorbet is holding you back from trying Sorbet, I'd strongly encourage you to give Sorbet a try anyways! Many people have shared great experiences adopting Sorbet in their Ruby codebases.

[1] https://github.com/AaronC81/parlour

[2] https://github.com/Shopify/rbs_parser

[3] https://sorbet.org/en/community

My favorite typing solution so far in ruby is Solargraph https://solargraph.org/.

Solagraph: https://solargraph.org

Yay! For those who don’t know solargraph provides a language server protocol (LSP) for Ruby so that your IDE (like vscode) can know more about the code you’re writing https://solargraph.org/.

If you're looking for IDE-level language assistance, I can't help you, but since you mentioned nvim: I use regular vim with CoC / Conquer of Completion (vim plugin; LSP server, may not strictly be necessary for nvim), Solargraph (Ruby Gem; language server), and Rubocop (also a Gem) for linting. I previously/still use ALE (vim plugin; Asynchronous Lint Engine) because I haven't gotten CoC+Solargraph to play nice with Rubocop, probably due to something silly.

https://github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim

https://solargraph.org/

https://rubocop.org/

https://github.com/dense-analysis/ale

My impression with all of this running under MacVim... it's plenty responsive. It can take a while for Solargraph to index everything on startup if you're working in a big project; once it loads, it's snappy. (There's probably a way to cache that startup scan.)

I am trying to use lsp-mode for ruby via solargraph and for Rails era templates using web-mode via lsp-tailwindcss and both seems to kinda sorta work but neither one is really giving me all the features that I see that others have.

https://github.com/castwide/solargraph Seems to be the most mature/developed one. Slow on my system, bad documentation. Language docs are shipped as "cores" you imperatively download that float around in your home directory; this is messy and prone to failure. Doesn't have any docs for versions of ruby past 2.7.

I have recently installed Solargraph and can see that when I open a Ruby file that the LSP is attached to my buffer via `LspInfo`. However whenever I am trying to do some very basic completions or see what kind of methods are available for an object, literally nothing happens. What I am aiming for is something like on the official Solargraph website: https://solargraph.org/

If you use Vim or Neovim, you can display RuboCop's diagnostics through coc.nvim. You need to install the Solargraph language server (gem install solargraph), followed by the coc-solargraph extension (:CocInstall coc-solargraph). Afterwards, configure your coc-settings.json file as shown below:

The builtin LSP works well with solargraph to provide autocompletion.

Sorbet and/or RBS seems like they may be the future given how popular typescript is with JS programmers these days. There are some other projects that assist programmers without relying on formal type definitions in the source or shadow typing files:

Solargraph combines inference and insight from YARD docs (standard for many gems, plus Castwide has written more YARD for the standard library) to make some pretty good guesses. Crucially it has plugins that add the insights from popular gems with static analysis (e.g. reek, rubocop). I maintain solargraph-rails, which parses your Ruby to make guesses about (surprise) Rails.

The typeprof gem can help IDE plugins make typing guesses based on your tests. This project is interesting to me because it's going into Ruby 3.1 so I think it reflects awareness from the core ruby team that many programmers are not ready to add types to their code.

solargraph: https://github.com/castwide/solargraph