Language Servers for Helix

I have been trying out Helix as my daily editor and the editor has built in support for LSP. However, it does not install the Language Servers, so you have to do that yourself.

Below are the language servers I installed for writing my code in HTML, CSS and Markdown.

You can always check if a language is setup by doing:

hx --health <lang>

So for example this will tell you if your HTML is supported:

hx --health html

HTML, CSS and SCSS

Both HTML, CSS and SCSS use the language server from Visual Studio Code:

npm i -g vscode-langservers-extracted

Markdown

For Markdown it uses marksman and to install it you can download the latest version from their releases page

wget <link from releases page>

# Make it executable
chmod +x marksman-<dist>

# Move it to a directory in your path, in my case `~/.local/bin`
mv marksman-<dist> ~/.local/bin/marksman

Move it to somewhere in your $PATH and you should be good to go.

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Zig types explained in Ziglings

I have been tinkering with Zig lately and to get a grasp on the language I have been using the excellent Ziglings quizes.

In Quiz #58 there is a great comment which lists the different types for Zig:

//
// We've absorbed a lot of information about the variations of types
// we can use in Zig. Roughly, in order we have:
//
//                          u8  single item
//                         *u8  single-item pointer
//                        []u8  slice (size known at runtime)
//                       [5]u8  array of 5 u8s
//                       [*]u8  many-item pointer (zero or more)
//                 enum {a, b}  set of unique values a and b
//                error {e, f}  set of unique error values e and f
//      struct {y: u8, z: i32}  group of values y and z
// union(enum) {a: u8, b: i32}  single value either u8 or i32
//
// Values of any of the above types can be assigned as "var" or "const"
// to allow or disallow changes (mutability) via the assigned name:
//
//     const a: u8 = 5; // immutable
//       var b: u8 = 5; //   mutable
//
// We can also make error unions or optional types from any of
// the above:
//
//     var a: E!u8 = 5; // can be u8 or error from set E
//     var b: ?u8 = 5;  // can be u8 or null

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Create a new repository with Github CLI

Github has their own CLI tool which enables you to interact with Github through the command line.

I often start new repositories and started using the following command to quickly create a accompanying, private repo on Github:

gh repo create <name> --private --source=. --remote=origin

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Install Emacs on the Mac

This note is outdated, I have since switched to Emacs Plus with Homebrew. See here: Install Emacs on the Mac - Part Two.

There are many ways to install Emacs on the Mac, from pre-build Applications, to Homebrew, to installing from source.

My current favorite way to get the latest Emacs which has some additional stuff for the Mac is by using a build script, which builds Emacs from its source.

It’s called build-emacs-macos and is on Github. The instructions to use it are here in the README.

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Emacs on Windows WSL2

So, it turns out that WSL2 is actually kind of neat, where it runs a Linux image at almost native speed, and also supports Wayland.

So, what’s the first thing you do in WSL2? Install Emacs of course!

Below is the script I use to install Emacs on an Ubuntu image.

To know what the latest stable version on master is, I look at this Github issue from Jim Myhrberg, who keeps track of those.

# Checkout Emacs
$ git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/emacs.git

# Checkout latest stable version, see note above.
$ git checkout 8febda4

# Vanilla Emacs requirements
$ sudo apt install build-essential autoconf libgtk-3-dev libgnutls28-dev libtiff5-dev libgif-dev libjpeg-dev libpng-dev librsvg2-dev libxpm-dev libncurses-dev texinfo adwaita-icon-theme-full

# Native compilation requirements
$ sudo apt install libgccjit-11-dev

# Required for Native JSON
$ sudo apt install libjansson4 libjansson-dev

# Required for tree-sitter support
$ sudo apt install libtree-sitter-dev

$ cd emacs
$ export CC=/usr/bin/gcc-11 CXX=/usr/bin/gcc-11
$ ./autogen.sh
$ ./configure --with-pgtk --with-native-compilation --with-tree-sitter --with-json --without-pop
$ make -j$(nproc)
$ sudo make install

And, sometimes when you update the repository, it refuses to build. I usually fix that with running make bootstrap er make distclean.

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Syncthing on WSL2

I like to use Syncthing to sync files between accounts and machines, and now even between my Windows subsystem and Windows itself.

To run Syncthing on WSL I use this script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
SERVICE="syncthing"
USER="petar"
PORT=2103
OPTS="
        --no-browser
        --home=/home/$USER/.config/syncthing
        --gui-address=http://127.0.0.1:$PORT
        --logfile=/home/$USER/.config/syncthing/syncthing.log
"

if ! pgrep -x "$SERVICE" >/dev/null
then
        daemonize /usr/bin/syncthing serve "$OPTS"
fi

Make sure to change your username and to make the port unique, if you run multiple Syncthings on your machine.

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Rust Analyzer from Source

I’m developing on a FreeBSD machine and rust-analyzer is not available as a pre-build release.

Luckily, it’s easy to build rust-analyzer from source. Just clone the repository and run:

cargo xtask install --server

I’m on Emacs, so I only need the server, hence the --server argument. If you are using Visual Studio Code, don’t add it.

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How to install Quicklisp

Before starting, make sure you have installed SBCL. Then, get the quicklisp file, which lets you bootstrap and install Quicklisp.

cd ~/downloads
curl -O http://beta.quicklisp.org/quicklisp.lisp
sbcl --load quicklisp.lisp

Now you are in the REPL, and you can install Quicklisp. By default, it will be installed in ~/quicklisp, but I like to keep my home directory clean and install it in ~/.local/share/quicklisp. Thus the :path argument.

(quicklisp-quickstart:install :path "~/.local/share/quicklisp/")

I also prefer Quicklisp to be available when I start SBCL, so I add it to my init file:

(ql:add-to-init-file)

That’s it! Happy Lisping!

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Switch the current working directory in the REPL

If you start a REPL in the wrong directory, you can switch it by using UIOP.

UIOP is the portability layer of ASDF, supplying an abstraction on top of different implementations or OS’es.

For example, to change to a new project do:

(uiop:chdir "~/lisp/fangorn/")

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Make your own packages available to Quicklisp

In Lisp it’s quite common to have your own helper libraries, which are packaged as ASDF packages. To be able to use your libraries in other projects, you need to let ASDF know how to find them.

First create the directory ~/.config/common-lisp/source-registry.conf.d/

There create a file with any name of your choice but with the type conf, for instance 50-petar-lisp.conf.

In this file, add the following line to tell ASDF to recursively scan all the subdirectories under /home/petar/lisp/ for .asd files: (:tree "/home/petar/lisp/").

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