4 ms·

What's the difference between egplot and lsp-mode? Why was it what the emacs devs settled on?

by j_m_b 4y ago

clircle 4y ago
Eglot has copyright assigned to FSF and has been targeting a master branch merge since its development started.
honkob 4y ago
Eglot is a bit of a smaller implementation and from my experience tends to require a bit less configuration than lsp-mode. I think eglot was settled on as the developer of eglot specifically put in the effort to make sure people did copyright assignment so it could be easily merged into the emacs master
e3bc54b2 4y ago
*eglot (short for Emacs polyGLOT) And major difference is eglot is slimmer compared to lsp-mode, integrates with and relies on built-ins more (xref etc) rather than inventing its own paradigm, is less cluttered by default and IME less buggier than lsp-mode cludge and now comes with emacs so doesn't need any other packages (other than language servers themselves, of course). OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer, generally support more features of the protocol than eglot and installs servers automatically (which may be a feature or bug depending on your system). It comes down to utility and personal preference, but I've used lsp-mode before, found it quite buggy and cluttered, moved to eglot and have near zero LSP config now.
- josteink 4y ago
  > egloty ... now comes with emacs so doesn't need any other packages (other than language servers themselves, of course). One of the things I love about lsp-mode is how it automatically installs any language server I need, when I need it. I would rather install one package and be done, than use one built-in package, and have to manually hunt, download, and manually maintain language-servers for all the different languages I'm using in my programs, on all the machines I do programming on. If eglot wants to become the defacto standard, it will need to solve this sooner rather than later. But I suspect RMS will be opposed to having Emacs automatically download "non-free" (not GPLed) code?
  - e3bc54b2 4y ago
    I understand where you are coming from, but in my case having anything be auto-installed is just a pain. My distro of choice is NixOS where installing stuff works fundamentally different from most other distros. When I tried it, lsp-mode just wasn't aware of it (not sure if it does now, but considering this space is vast, it is simply impossible to support every distro out there). Which means automated installation simply didn't work and I had to spend lot of time finding issues. For Emacs newbie it was a terrible pain. Compared to that, I was done setting up Eglot + language server in 2 minutes flat, there was no config needed and it Just Worked!
  - lvass 4y ago
    On the other hand, "manually" installing LSP servers for me has consistently been running a single liner, with the huge benefit of being packaged in a predictable manner and updated alongside my system.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    The idea of my lsp mode installing servers for me fills me with dread. I'm fine with, like, `brew install whatever-server` or `go get golang.org/x/tools/gopls` or whatever. But if lsp-mode's deal for installing a new language server happens not to work on my machine, I'm in for 45 minutes of elisp debugging to figure out what the hell is going wrong. Most languages we work in have more tooling than just a language server; we don't expect Emacs to install our debugger or code generator. It's weird that we expect it to install the lsp server.
    - josteink 4y ago
      It has language servers for lots of things. Things you may not even consider languages! HTML, CSS, JSON (and all its different usages and schemas), etc. What tooling would you install for that? What tooling does your system package-manager offer for that? LSP-mode offering a “vertical” form of integration here (these major modes have been tested with these servers, and here’s how to install and invoke them) makes perfect sense to me as a user.
  - rekado 4y ago
- jhoechtl 4y ago
  > OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer for those editing html fes with css and javascript all in one file this is a showstopper
- amake 4y ago
  lsp-mode also uses xref.
  - tptacek 4y ago
    It has its own thingy, too, in lsp-ui, right?
- morelisp 4y ago
  > OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer If LSP survives, I'm certain solving this in the editor rather than the server this will come to be seen as an anti-pattern.
  - mdaniel 4y ago
    I wish I knew more of the LSP surface area in order to know whether a "meta LSP" was feasible. IJ has something similar with "embedded languages" that it either ships knowing about, or a user can annotate an AST section with a comment (in the outer language's syntax) indicating the inner language; SQL language support in Java is the most recent example I can think of -- both of these situations allow inspection of the inner language: // IJ knows that "executeQuery" only accepts SQL string literals // and the string is both highlighted and checked that "count" and "thing" are legal statement.executeQuery("SELECT count(1) FROM thing"); // the following line designates the inner language // language=SQL String someSql = "WITH thing AS (SELECT whatever) SELECT * FROM thing"; With a language server, I'm guessing it would have to take the 2nd route, since I don't think language servers get into the business of knowing the semantics of the libraries against which they are completing
    - morelisp 4y ago
      It's a somewhat-supported thing; https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/embedded-languages https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/embedd... has some introduction to how it's often done. My (limited, from trying to hack a language server for a custom C preprocessor I have and reading a few others) experience is that language servers are not very good at true arbitrary composition but even the most monolithic ones are at least somewhat "wrappable". So a normal Java LSP wrapped in something that recognizes `executeQuery` and knows how to run additional checks on its string argument is possible. However, that thing running the additional checks on the string could not itself easily be an arbitrary SQL language server unless it was expressly designed for doing so. The bigger issue is that you usually want some kind of semantic knowledge to cross the boundary! For example in HTML If I look for the definition of a string '#foo' in JS I want to jump to the element with ID foo; if I want to find uses of a .foo CSS selector I want to find the HTML documents with class="foo" and the JSX components with className="foo", etc. Isolating the servers misses most of the potential. You need a language-server-protocol-server protocol that can pass typed identifiers between each other; and now you've got not just programming problems but ontological problems which are the worst kind to have.
dleslie 4y ago
As a primarily C# developer, these days, both are unusable because their interaction with omnisharp is slow, brittle, and prone to indefinite hangs. It's odd, because vscode uses omnisharp over lsp and it is fast, powerful and reliable.
- zasdffaa 4y ago
  I tried using omnisharp with emacs and it was as crappy as you say. I gave up with it and went back to Vis. studio, with regrets.
luispauloml 4y ago
Aside from what has been said, it is possible that whoever is behind lsp-mode may have never actually suggested to merge it into master. I haven't checked if this is the case, though, but if it is, then the decision is a lot simpler.

What's the difference between egplot and lsp-mode? Why was it what the emacs devs settled on?

by j_m_b 4y ago

What's the difference between egplot and lsp-mode? Why was it what the emacs devs settled on?

clircle 4y ago

Eglot has copyright assigned to FSF and has been targeting a master branch merge since its development started.

honkob 4y ago

Eglot is a bit of a smaller implementation and from my experience tends to require a bit less configuration than lsp-mode. I think eglot was settled on as the developer of eglot specifically put in the effort to make sure people did copyright assignment so it could be easily merged into the emacs master

e3bc54b2 4y ago

*eglot (short for Emacs polyGLOT) And major difference is eglot is slimmer compared to lsp-mode, integrates with and relies on built-ins more (xref etc) rather than inventing its own paradigm, is less cluttered by default and IME less buggier than lsp-mode cludge and now comes with emacs so doesn't need any other packages (other than language servers themselves, of course). OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer, generally support more features of the protocol than eglot and installs servers automatically (which may be a feature or bug depending on your system). It comes down to utility and personal preference, but I've used lsp-mode before, found it quite buggy and cluttered, moved to eglot and have near zero LSP config now.

josteink 4y ago
> egloty ... now comes with emacs so doesn't need any other packages (other than language servers themselves, of course). One of the things I love about lsp-mode is how it automatically installs any language server I need, when I need it. I would rather install one package and be done, than use one built-in package, and have to manually hunt, download, and manually maintain language-servers for all the different languages I'm using in my programs, on all the machines I do programming on. If eglot wants to become the defacto standard, it will need to solve this sooner rather than later. But I suspect RMS will be opposed to having Emacs automatically download "non-free" (not GPLed) code?
- e3bc54b2 4y ago
  I understand where you are coming from, but in my case having anything be auto-installed is just a pain. My distro of choice is NixOS where installing stuff works fundamentally different from most other distros. When I tried it, lsp-mode just wasn't aware of it (not sure if it does now, but considering this space is vast, it is simply impossible to support every distro out there). Which means automated installation simply didn't work and I had to spend lot of time finding issues. For Emacs newbie it was a terrible pain. Compared to that, I was done setting up Eglot + language server in 2 minutes flat, there was no config needed and it Just Worked!
- lvass 4y ago
  On the other hand, "manually" installing LSP servers for me has consistently been running a single liner, with the huge benefit of being packaged in a predictable manner and updated alongside my system.
- tptacek 4y ago
  The idea of my lsp mode installing servers for me fills me with dread. I'm fine with, like, `brew install whatever-server` or `go get golang.org/x/tools/gopls` or whatever. But if lsp-mode's deal for installing a new language server happens not to work on my machine, I'm in for 45 minutes of elisp debugging to figure out what the hell is going wrong. Most languages we work in have more tooling than just a language server; we don't expect Emacs to install our debugger or code generator. It's weird that we expect it to install the lsp server.
  - josteink 4y ago
    It has language servers for lots of things. Things you may not even consider languages! HTML, CSS, JSON (and all its different usages and schemas), etc. What tooling would you install for that? What tooling does your system package-manager offer for that? LSP-mode offering a “vertical” form of integration here (these major modes have been tested with these servers, and here’s how to install and invoke them) makes perfect sense to me as a user.
- rekado 4y ago
jhoechtl 4y ago
> OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer for those editing html fes with css and javascript all in one file this is a showstopper
amake 4y ago
lsp-mode also uses xref.
- tptacek 4y ago
  It has its own thingy, too, in lsp-ui, right?
morelisp 4y ago
> OTOH lsp-mode supports more than 1 active language server per buffer If LSP survives, I'm certain solving this in the editor rather than the server this will come to be seen as an anti-pattern.
- mdaniel 4y ago
  I wish I knew more of the LSP surface area in order to know whether a "meta LSP" was feasible. IJ has something similar with "embedded languages" that it either ships knowing about, or a user can annotate an AST section with a comment (in the outer language's syntax) indicating the inner language; SQL language support in Java is the most recent example I can think of -- both of these situations allow inspection of the inner language: // IJ knows that "executeQuery" only accepts SQL string literals // and the string is both highlighted and checked that "count" and "thing" are legal statement.executeQuery("SELECT count(1) FROM thing"); // the following line designates the inner language // language=SQL String someSql = "WITH thing AS (SELECT whatever) SELECT * FROM thing"; With a language server, I'm guessing it would have to take the 2nd route, since I don't think language servers get into the business of knowing the semantics of the libraries against which they are completing
  - morelisp 4y ago
    It's a somewhat-supported thing; https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/embedded-languages https://code.visualstudio.com/api/language-extensions/embedd... has some introduction to how it's often done. My (limited, from trying to hack a language server for a custom C preprocessor I have and reading a few others) experience is that language servers are not very good at true arbitrary composition but even the most monolithic ones are at least somewhat "wrappable". So a normal Java LSP wrapped in something that recognizes `executeQuery` and knows how to run additional checks on its string argument is possible. However, that thing running the additional checks on the string could not itself easily be an arbitrary SQL language server unless it was expressly designed for doing so. The bigger issue is that you usually want some kind of semantic knowledge to cross the boundary! For example in HTML If I look for the definition of a string '#foo' in JS I want to jump to the element with ID foo; if I want to find uses of a .foo CSS selector I want to find the HTML documents with class="foo" and the JSX components with className="foo", etc. Isolating the servers misses most of the potential. You need a language-server-protocol-server protocol that can pass typed identifiers between each other; and now you've got not just programming problems but ontological problems which are the worst kind to have.

dleslie 4y ago

As a primarily C# developer, these days, both are unusable because their interaction with omnisharp is slow, brittle, and prone to indefinite hangs. It's odd, because vscode uses omnisharp over lsp and it is fast, powerful and reliable.

zasdffaa 4y ago
I tried using omnisharp with emacs and it was as crappy as you say. I gave up with it and went back to Vis. studio, with regrets.

luispauloml 4y ago

Aside from what has been said, it is possible that whoever is behind lsp-mode may have never actually suggested to merge it into master. I haven't checked if this is the case, though, but if it is, then the decision is a lot simpler.