Common 

After my series of LSP client posts, I got the question: What does this actually do? And why should I like this or help with it?

For the basic question: What the heck is the Language Server Protocol (LSP), I think my first post can help. Or, for more details, just head over to the official what/why/… page.

But easier than to describe why it is nice, I can just show the stuff in action. Below is a video that shows the features that at the moment work with our master branch. It is shown using the build directory of Kate itself.

The new LSP client by Mark Nauwelaerts keeps making nice progress.

It will not be shipped with the KDE Applications 19.08 release, but in master it is now compiled & installed per default. You only need to activate it on the plugin configuration page in Kate’s settings dialog to be able to use it.

For details how to build Kate master with it’s plugins, please take a look at this guide.

The new LSP client by Mark Nauwelaerts made nice progress since the LSP client restart post last week.

Reminder: The plugin is not compiled per default, you can turn it on via:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=“your prefix” -DENABLE_LSPCLIENT=ON “kate src dir”

The code can still be found kate.git master, see lspclient in the addons directory.

What is new?

• Diagnostics support: A tab in the LSP client toolview will show the diagnistics, grouped by file with links to jump to the locations. Issues will be highlighted in the editor view, too.

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Since my last post about the LSP client progress in May I didn’t work on that project at all I think.

But the good news is, somebody else did scratch that itch on his own ;=)

We have now a prototype plugin in kate.git master, see lspclient in the addons directory.

It is not compiled per default, you can turn it on via:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=“your prefix” -DENABLE_LSPCLIENT=ON “kate src dir”

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While browsing the ISO C++ homepage I stumbled over the results PDF of the Second Annual C++ Foundation Developer Survey “Lite”.

I was astonished that Kate made it into the “Which development environments (IDEs) or editors do you use for C++ development?” results.

;=) Seems not only I use it as my normal editor for working on C++ code.

And heads up, KDevelop is there, too!

Two days ago I mentioned here that the bug report count of KTextEditor and Kate has risen to some not that manageable amount.

For developers that report a bugs or wish, the best way to really get it solved is to scratch your own itch and provide some patch.

I know this is not feasible for all bug reporters, as not all are developers nor will even the developers all have either time nor perhaps the right skill set to tackle the issue on their own.

The bug report count of KTextEditor (implementing the editing part used in Kate/KWrite/KDevelop/Kile/…) and Kate itself reached again some value over 200.

If you have time and need an itch to scratch, any help to tackle the currently open bugs would be highly appreciated.

The full list can be found with this bugs.kde.org query.

Easy things anybody with a bit time could do would be:

• check if the bug still is there with current master builds, if not, close it it
• check if it is the duplicate of a similar still open bug, if yes, mark it as duplicate

Beside that, patches for any of the existing issues are very welcome.

The Kate lsp branch contains now the infrastructure as used by Qt Creator. In addition, clangd is now somehow started in a working state for the first project opened inside Kate.

For example, if you use the CMake Kate project generator and you compile Kate from the “lsp” branch, clangd should pick up the compile_commands.json for a CMake generated Kate project.

;=) Unfortunately not much more than starting and informing clangd about the open workspaces (for the first opened project) works ATM.

As you can read in the official Creator 4.9.0 release announcement, Qt Creator now uses the KSyntaxHighlighting Framework for providing the generic highlighting.

This is a nice step for the wider adoption of this MIT licensed part of the KDE Frameworks.

And this is not just an one-way consumption of our work.

The framework got actively patches back that make it more usable for other consumers, too, like Kate ;=)