# Using LanguageServer.jl with eglot in emacs

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125>\
**Category:** Tooling\
**Tags:** editors, emacs\
**Created:** [April 14, 2019, 1:46am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125 "2019-04-14T01:46:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 20\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 1:46am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/1 "2019-04-14T01:46:19Z")

</div>

This weekend I got LanguageServer.jl working with [eglot](https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot) (an alternative to lsp-mode), and [I documented the process in the LanguageServer.jl wiki](https://github.com/JuliaEditorSupport/LanguageServer.jl/wiki/Emacs). I haven’t had enough time to play with it and see how it compares to lsp-mode, but it seems to be working pretty well; in general my impression of it so far is positive compared to lsp-mode, but I don’t know if that’s because my lsp-julia package is screwing something up, because LanguageServer.jl has improved in the several months since I last used lsp-julia, or because eglot actually works better. Let me know if you have trouble getting things working.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2019, 5:38am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/2 "2019-04-14T05:38:31Z")

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Thanks for the wiki writeup, it should be very useful! AFAICT LanguageServer has improved a lot recently.

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**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 9:23am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/3 "2019-05-03T09:23:31Z")

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I could not make this work: I see Julia using a lot of CPU for a while, then eglot timeouts. Even increasing `eglot-connect-timeout` to `600` didn’t help.

I am curious how I could debug this, and whether it is just normal “time to first X”, or something else. `eglot-events-buffer` reports

```julia
jsonrpc-error: "No current JSON-RPC connection", (jsonrpc-error-code . 32603), (jsonrpc-error-message . "No current JSON-RPC connection")

```

---

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**Author:** ![pfitzseb](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/pfitzseb/32/45566_2.png) [@pfitzseb](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/pfitzseb)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 10:04am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/4 "2019-05-03T10:04:35Z")

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I’d recommend running something like

```julia
using LanguageServer, SymbolServer
server = LanguageServerInstance(stdin, stdout, true, "/home/you/.julia/environments/v1.1", "", Dict())
run(server)

```

in a normal REPL and wait for a message like “Symbol store set” or similar. The first run will take a _long_ time since it needs to load (and inspect) _all_ packages in your environment.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [May 3, 2019, 10:50am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/5 "2019-05-03T10:50:14Z")

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Perfect, this solved the issue.

@non-Jedi: would you consider packaging the code you wrote up in the wiki, say, as `eglot-julia` on MELPA?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [May 6, 2019, 2:44pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/6 "2019-05-06T14:44:23Z")

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To be honest, I don’t see a whole lot of utility in eglot+julia until  
[the crashing on save  
problem](https://github.com/JuliaEditorSupport/LanguageServer.jl/issues/340)  
is fixed. In any case, the right™ way of packaging this is probably to  
[push all of the project.el integration code into  
julia-mode](https://github.com/joaotavora/eglot/issues/250#issuecomment-483810379)  
and then add integrated support to the eglot package for Julia’s  
language server.

I don’t have time/inclination to do either of those things at this  
moment in time, but if you do (or want to package it separately), I  
hereby release any code I’ve written in the LanguageServer.jl wiki  
under  
[CC0](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/legalcode).

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**Author:** ![gdkrmr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gdkrmr/32/2791_2.png) [@gdkrmr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdkrmr)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 7:53am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/7 "2019-09-04T07:53:07Z")

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I your opinion, what are the advantages of `eglot` over `lsp-mode`? I have the impression that very few people actually use `lsp-julia` and therefore wanted to try `eglot` but there is no `eglot` support in `spacemacs`, so I am a bit hesitant.

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**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:13pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/8 "2019-09-04T13:13:38Z")

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(I’ll respond only here instead of on both github and here to keep the conversation in one place)

Most of the difference is that I find eglot easier to grok:

1. The codebase was cleaner and easier to read.
2. The documentation was simpler.
3. There’s no equivalent to lsp-ui that adds lots of noise and confusion (and was needed for flycheck integration).
4. eglot integrates with components that are included with emacs instead of external packages: `completion-at-point` instead of `company-mode`, `project.el` instead of projectile, flymake instead of flycheck, etc.

Philosophically, eglot is closer to a “library” than a framework whereas I found lsp-mode more on the “framework” side of that divide. It’s much the same reason I switched from using Spacemacs to having a vanilla emacs config.

Half the time, I don’t want the fancy IDE features provided by LanguageServer.jl at all, so when I do using eglot feels much less intrusive and closer to my normal editing environment than lsp-mode ever did.

> [@Tamas\_Papp](#):
>
> would you consider packaging the code you wrote up in the wiki, say, as `eglot-julia` on MELPA?

I may have time to do this in the coming weeks. Would it be helpful to you as well @gdkrmr if you could simply install “eglot-julia” from melpa and `M-x eglot` in a julia buffer?

> [@non-Jedi](#):
>
> To be honest, I don’t see a whole lot of utility in eglot+julia until  
> [the crashing on save  
> problem ](https://github.com/JuliaEditorSupport/LanguageServer.jl/issues/340)

If anyone was holding off on trying eglot because of this, that particular bug is fixed now.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gdkrmr](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/gdkrmr/32/2791_2.png) [@gdkrmr](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/gdkrmr)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:42pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/9 "2019-09-04T13:42:36Z")

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> [@non-Jedi](#):
>
> Would it be helpful to you as well @gdkrmr if you could simply install “eglot-julia” from melpa and `M-x eglot` in a julia buffer?

The main issue for me is that I use spacemacs and AFAIK no one has done any work to integrate spacemacs with eglot. Spacemacs uses all the packages you mention (projectile, company, flycheck) and changes their keybindings, this can make stepping outside of these packages a bit annoying.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:51pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/10 "2019-09-04T13:51:28Z")

</div>

company-mode can work with `completion-at-point` through the capf backend. Only thing project.el is used for is choosing the environment for a package and should work out of the box with the snippets I included in the LanguageServer.jl wiki. And flymake errors can be accessed simply with `M-x help-at-point`. For trying something out, none of this should be disruptive to the normal spacemacs workflow.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Tamas\_Papp](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/tamas_papp/32/25949_2.png) [@Tamas\_Papp](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/Tamas_Papp)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:55pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/11 "2019-09-04T13:55:21Z")

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> [@non-Jedi](#):
>
> Would it be helpful to you as well @gdkrmr if you could simply install “eglot-julia” from melpa and `M-x eglot` in a julia buffer?

Yes, it would be great.

Packaging up for MELPA is not that much of a hassle, I did it for `julia-repl`. You just follow the guidelines (especially the linting), then get valuable feedback.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 4, 2019, 1:58pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/12 "2019-09-04T13:58:48Z")

</div>

The thing I need to figure out is how to run a command on first install to instantiate the environment for LanguageServer.jl. Should be relatively straightforward other than that. Planning on looking at how emacs-jupyter/emacs-zmq do so.

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**Author:** ![4aHxKzD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/4ahxkzd/32/10833_2.png) [@4aHxKzD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/4aHxKzD)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 4:14pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/13 "2019-09-20T16:14:23Z")

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@non-Jedi I followed your process of making eglot work with LanguageServer.jl but it doesn’t seem to be working. This is what I get after launching eglot-mode in a `*.jl` named buffer.

**`*Messages`** \*

> [jsonrpc] Server exited with status 9  
> Error running timer: (error “[eglot] Timed out”)

**EGLOT (tmp/julia-mode) events**

> client-request (id:1) Fri Sep 20 16:46:30 2019:  
> (:jsonrpc “2.0” :id 1 :method “initialize” :params  
> (:processId 26863 :rootPath “/tmp/” :rootUri “file:///tmp/” :initializationOptions nil :capabilities  
> (:workspace  
> (:applyEdit t :executeCommand  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :workspaceEdit  
> (:documentChanges :json-false)  
> :didChangeWatchedFiles  
> (:dynamicRegistration t)  
> :symbol  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false))  
> :textDocument  
> (:synchronization  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false :willSave t :willSaveWaitUntil t :didSave t)  
> :completion  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false :completionItem  
> (:snippetSupport :json-false)  
> :contextSupport t)  
> :hover  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :signatureHelp  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false :signatureInformation  
> (:parameterInformation  
> (:labelOffsetSupport t)))  
> :references  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :definition  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :documentSymbol  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false :symbolKind  
> (:valueSet  
> [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26]))  
> :documentHighlight  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :codeAction  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false :codeActionLiteralSupport  
> (:codeActionKind  
> (:valueSet  
> [“quickfix” “refactor” “refactor.extract” “refactor.inline” “refactor.rewrite” “source” “source.organizeImports”])))  
> :formatting  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :rangeFormatting  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :rename  
> (:dynamicRegistration :json-false)  
> :publishDiagnostics  
> (:relatedInformation :json-false))  
> :experimental nil)))  
> internal Fri Sep 20 16:47:00 2019:  
> (:message “Connection state changed” :change “killed\n”)  
> ----------b—y—e—b—y—e----------

**EGLOT (tmp/julia-mode) output**

> Activating environment at `~/.emacs.d/lisp/eglot-julia/Project.toml`  
> Updating registry at `~/.julia/registries/General`  
> Updating git-repo `https://github.com/JuliaRegistries/General.git`  
> e[?25le[2Ke[?25hContent-Length: 713  
> {“id”:1,“jsonrpc”:“2.0”,“result”:{“capabilities”:{“textDocumentSync”:2,“hoverProvider”:true,“completionProvider”:{“resolveProvider”:false,“triggerCharacters”:[“.”]},“signatureHelpProvider”:{“triggerCharacters”:[“(”]},“definitionProvider”:true,“typeDefinitionProvider”:false,“implementationProvider”:false,“referencesProvider”:true,“documentHighlightProvider”:false,“documentSymbolProvider”:true,“workspaceSymbolProvider”:true,“codeActionProvider”:false,“documentFormattingProvider”:true,“documentRangeFormattingProvider”:false,“renameProvider”:true,“colorProvider”:false,“executeCommandProvider”:{“commands”:},“workspace”:{“workspaceFolders”:{“supported”:true,“changeNotifications”:true}},“experimental”:null}}}

**EGLOT (tmp/julia-mode) stderr**

> [ Info: Started symbol server  
> [ Info: store set  
> Process EGLOT (tmp/julia-mode) stderr finished

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 20, 2019, 8:10pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/14 "2019-09-20T20:10:16Z")

</div>

You’ll have to make sure that LanguageServer.jl is already compiled and cached before running eglot. See e.g.:

> [@Using LanguageServer.jl with eglot in emacs](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/4):
>
> I’d recommend running something like using LanguageServer, SymbolServer server = LanguageServerInstance(stdin, stdout, true, "/home/you/.julia/environments/v1.1", "", Dict()) run(server) in a normal REPL and wait for a message like “Symbol store set” or similar. The first run will take a long time since it needs to load (and inspect) all packages in your environment.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![4aHxKzD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/4ahxkzd/32/10833_2.png) [@4aHxKzD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/4aHxKzD)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2019, 5:15pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/15 "2019-09-25T17:15:15Z")

</div>

@non-Jedi After following those steps it keeps happening. I only changed all the instances of “1.1” to “1.2” since it is my Julia version.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 25, 2019, 7:12pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/16 "2019-09-25T19:12:27Z")

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Which versions of LanguageServer, CSTParser, and SymbolServer are installed in the environment you’re running the language server from? I’ve had issues with some of the released versions. It might be worth looking at [the versions used with lsp-julia](https://github.com/non-Jedi/lsp-julia/tree/master/languageserver) since gdkrmr has tracked down the exact git commits used with the VSCode plugin.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2019, 1:16pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/17 "2019-09-26T13:16:06Z")

</div>

I just realized you’re trying to edit a file outside of a “Project” with eglot. All of my work is encapsulated in projects, so I haven’t tried that yet. Will mess around with it when I get a chance and see if I can replicate your experience. In the mean time, could you try to create a simple project for your code and try running `eglot` in a `*.jl` buffer under `src`? A simple project can be generated with:

```julia
using Pkg
Pkg.generate("ExampleProject")

```

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![4aHxKzD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/4ahxkzd/32/10833_2.png) [@4aHxKzD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/4aHxKzD)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2019, 1:41pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/18 "2019-09-26T13:41:45Z")

</div>

Hi.  
First of all, thank your for trying to help me.  
So, I tried running `eglot` in a `*.jl` buffer under `src` but the problem persists.  
About the versions, I have `LanguageServer 0.6.1`, `CSTParser 0.6.2`, and `SymbolServer 0.2.5`.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![non-Jedi](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/non-jedi/32/3645_2.png) [@non-Jedi](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/non-Jedi)\
**Post date:** [September 26, 2019, 3:31pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/19 "2019-09-26T15:31:28Z")

</div>

One other thing to try is to set `eglot-connect-timeout` to a very large value, say 300 or so. It’s set to 60 in my config right now.

> [@4aHxKzD](#):
>
> About the versions, I have `LanguageServer 0.6.1` , `CSTParser 0.6.2` , and `SymbolServer 0.2.5` .

Like I said before, the team behind LanguageServer.jl doesn’t seem to always make sure their releases all work together properly. LanguageServer.jl is mostly used for the [VSCode plugin](https://github.com/julia-vscode/julia-vscode) which historically has just grabbed random git commits of the packages involved. [Directly matching those commits](https://github.com/julia-vscode/julia-vscode/tree/master/scripts/languageserver/packages) has historically been the best way of ensuring stable operation of the language server.

Looking now, it appears they’re actually using released versions of each package for their latest vscode plugin release candidate. Those versions are probably your best bet.

- `CSTParser@0.6.1`
- `DocumentFormat@0.4.1`
- `LanguageServer@0.6.1`
- `StaticLint@0.2.2`
- `SymbolServer@0.2.5`
- `Tokenize@0.5.5`

If you use those specific versions of the package in your language server environment and are still having issues, we can probably safely eliminate the language server as the cause of the problem (eglot sends the language server a message and does not receive a reply even though the language server appears to be ready).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![4aHxKzD](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/4ahxkzd/32/10833_2.png) [@4aHxKzD](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/4aHxKzD)\
**Post date:** [October 15, 2019, 2:30pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125/20 "2019-10-15T14:30:22Z")

</div>

In the end I managed to get it to work but it is still very slow so I wont use it for the time being. Thank you for your help.

[Next page](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/using-languageserver-jl-with-eglot-in-emacs/23125.md?page=2)