This is a Language Server Protocol implementation in Nim, for Nim. It is based on nimsuggest, which means that every editor that supports LSP will now have the same quality of suggestions that has previously only been available in supported editors.

If you have installed Nim through choosenim (recommended) the easiest way to install nimlsp is to use nimble with:

nimble install nimlsp

This will compile and install it in the nimble binary directory, which if you have set up nimble correctly it should be in your path. When compiling and using nimlsp it needs to have Nim's sources available in order to work. With Nim installed through choosenim these should already be on your system and nimlsp should be able to find and use them automatically. However if you have installed nimlsp in a different way you might run into issues where it can't find certain files during compilation/running. To fix this you need to grab a copy of Nim sources and then point nimlsp at them on compile-time by using -d:explicitSourcePath=PATH, where PATH is where you have your Nim sources. You can also pass them at run-time (if for example you're working with a custom copy of the stdlib by passing it as an argument to nimlsp. How exectly to do that will depend on the LSP client.

If you want more control over the compilation feel free to clone the repository. nimlsp depends on the nimsuggest sources which are in the main Nim repository, so make sure you have a copy of that somewhere. Manually having a copy of Nim this way means the default source path will not work so you need to set it explicitly on compilation with -d:explicitSourcePath=PATH and point to it at runtime (technically the runtime should only need the stdlib, so omitting it will make nimlsp try to find it from your Nim install). As of Nim 2.0.0 you must run the 'build_all' script in the Nim repository first (nimsuggest expects to import a file that is not otherwise present).

To do the standard build run:

nimble build

Or if you want debug output when nimlsp is running:

nimble debug

Or if you want even more debug output from the LSP format:

nimble debug -d:debugLogging

Install the LSP plugin. Install the Nim plugin for syntax highlighting.

To set up LSP, run Preferences: LSP settings from the command palette and add the following:

{
   "clients": {
      "nimlsp": {
         "command": ["nimlsp"],
         "enabled": true,

         // ST4 only
         "selector": "source.nim",

         // ST3 only
         "languageId": "nim",
         "scopes": ["source.nim"],
         "syntaxes": ["Packages/Nim/Syntaxes/Nim.sublime-syntax"]
      }
   }
}

Note: Make sure ``<path/to>/.nimble/bin`` is added to your ``PATH``.

To enable syntax highlighting in popups, run Preferences: settings and add the following:

"mdpopups.use_sublime_highlighter": true,
"mdpopups.sublime_user_lang_map": {
   "nim":
   [
      [
         "nim"
      ],
      [
         "Nim/Syntaxes/Nim"
      ]
   ]
}

To use nimlsp in Vim install the prabirshrestha/vim-lsp plugin and dependencies:

Plugin 'prabirshrestha/asyncomplete.vim'
Plugin 'prabirshrestha/async.vim'
Plugin 'prabirshrestha/vim-lsp'
Plugin 'prabirshrestha/asyncomplete-lsp.vim'

Then set it up to use nimlsp for Nim files:

let s:nimlspexecutable = "nimlsp"
let g:lsp_log_verbose = 1
let g:lsp_log_file = expand('/tmp/vim-lsp.log')
" for asyncomplete.vim log
let g:asyncomplete_log_file = expand('/tmp/asyncomplete.log')

let g:asyncomplete_auto_popup = 0

if has('win32')
   let s:nimlspexecutable = "nimlsp.cmd"
   " Windows has no /tmp directory, but has $TEMP environment variable
   let g:lsp_log_file = expand('$TEMP/vim-lsp.log')
   let g:asyncomplete_log_file = expand('$TEMP/asyncomplete.log')
endif
if executable(s:nimlspexecutable)
   au User lsp_setup call lsp#register_server({
   \ 'name': 'nimlsp',
   \ 'cmd': {server_info->[s:nimlspexecutable]},
   \ 'whitelist': ['nim'],
   \ })
endif

function! s:check_back_space() abort
    let col = col('.') - 1
    return !col || getline('.')[col - 1]  =~ '\s'
endfunction

inoremap <silent><expr> <TAB>
  \ pumvisible() ? "\<C-n>" :
  \ <SID>check_back_space() ? "\<TAB>" :
  \ asyncomplete#force_refresh()
inoremap <expr><S-TAB> pumvisible() ? "\<C-p>" : "\<C-h>"

This configuration allows you to hit Tab to get auto-complete, and to call various functions to rename and get definitions. Of course you are free to configure this any way you'd like.

With lsp-mode and use-package:

(use-package nim-mode
  :ensure t
  :hook
  (nim-mode . lsp))

Or with Eglot

(add-to-list 'eglot-server-programs
          '(nim-mode "nimlsp"))

You will need to install the LSP support plugin. For syntax highlighting i would recommend the "official" nim plugin (its not exactly official, but its developed by an intellij dev), the plugin will eventually use nimsuggest and have support for all this things and probably more, but since its still very new most of the features are still not implemented, so the LSP is a decent solution (and the only one really).

To use it:

1. Install the LSP and the nim plugin.
2. Go into settings > Language & Frameworks > Language Server Protocol > Server Definitions.
3. Set the LSP mode to executable, the extension to nim and in the Path, the path to your nimlsp executable.
4. Hit apply and everything should be working now.

The LSP plugin has to be enabled in the Kate (version >= 19.12.0) plugins menu:

1. In Settings > Configure Kate > Application > Plugins, check box next to LSP Client to enable LSP functionality.
2. Go to the now-available LSP Client menu (Settings > Configure Kate > Application) and enter the following in the User Server Settings tab:

{
    "servers": {
        "nim": {
            "command": [".nimble/bin/nimlsp"],
            "url": "https://github.com/PMunch/nimlsp",
            "highlightingModeRegex": "^Nim$"
        }
    }
}

This assumes that nimlsp was installed through nimble. Note: Server initialization may fail without full path specified, from home directory, under the ``"command"`` entry, even if nimlsp is in system's ``PATH``.

Install a VS Code extension that supports NimLSP (2 available at the moment):

• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=junknet.nimlsp
• https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bung87.vscode-nim-lsp

Set nimlsp.path extension setting to the binary path of nimlsp. If you've installed nimlsp using nimble it is already in system's PATH.

stderr of nimlsp process will be available in Output > nim|nimlsp terminal

Not too many at the moment unfortunately, but they can be run with:

nimble test

Use nimlsp_debug executable instead of nimlsp, which is installed alongside it and should already be available in your path.

Log files containing stdin/out will be generated in getTempDir() / "nimlsp-" & $getCurrentProcessId() / "nimlsp.log" folder, where getCurrentProcessId() is the running pid of nimlsp_debug instance executed by the IDE/extension, and can be read using pgrep -a nimlsp_debug. Crashes may print stacktraces in stderr, which is not contained in logs but may captured by LSP client.

when stdin/out/err is not enough, it is possible to trace all system calls of nimlsp[_debug] via sudo strace -p<pid> -s9999 > strace.log 2>&1

test/logrunner can be used to replay the query submitted to nimlsp stored inside nimlsp.log:

NimLSP test runner, run as runner <nimlsp binary> <log file>
The log files must be generated by a nimlsp instance with -d:debugCommunication enabled.
The nimlsp binary being tested doesn't require this flag.