lsp-mode uses lsp-docker to run language servers using in containers

Table of Contents

• Preconfigured language servers
• Usage
• emacslsp/lsp-docker-langservers
  • Configuration
  • How it works
• emacslsp/lsp-docker-full
  • Flags
    • Emacs
    • Spacemacs
• Custom language server containers
• Docker over TRAMP (TBD)
• See also
• Maintainers

Preconfigured language servers

emacslsp/lsp-docker-langservers has the following content:

• Language servers:

  Language	Language Server
  Bash	bash-language-server
  C++	ccls
  CSS/LessCSS/SASS/SCSS	css
  Dockerfile	dockerfile-language-server-nodejs
  Go	gopls
  HTML	html
  JavaScript/TypeScript	typescript-language-server
  Python	pyls

Usage

There are two ways of working with containerized language servers:

• 2 containers provided by lsp-docker:
  • emacslsp/lsp-docker-langservers
  • emacslsp/lsp-docker-full
• Custom language server containers

emacslsp/lsp-docker-langservers

This container is used by lsp-docker to run Language Servers for lsp-mode over local sources. You must pull the container before lsp-docker can use it

Configuration

• Clone the repo

  git clone https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-docker
      

• Pull the container

  docker pull emacslsp/lsp-docker-langservers
      

• Add repo to load path and register the docker clients in your ~/.emacs file

  ;; Uncomment the next line if you are using this from source
  ;; (add-to-list 'load-path "<path-to-lsp-docker-dir>")
  (require 'lsp-docker)
  
  (defvar lsp-docker-client-packages
      '(lsp-css lsp-clients lsp-bash lsp-go lsp-pyls lsp-html lsp-typescript
        lsp-terraform lsp-clangd))
  
  (setq lsp-docker-client-configs
      '((:server-id bash-ls :docker-server-id bashls-docker :server-command "bash-language-server start")
        (:server-id clangd :docker-server-id clangd-docker :server-command "clangd")
        (:server-id css-ls :docker-server-id cssls-docker :server-command "css-languageserver --stdio")
        (:server-id dockerfile-ls :docker-server-id dockerfilels-docker :server-command "docker-langserver --stdio")
        (:server-id gopls :docker-server-id gopls-docker :server-command "gopls")
        (:server-id html-ls :docker-server-id htmls-docker :server-command "html-languageserver --stdio")
        (:server-id pyls :docker-server-id pyls-docker :server-command "pyls")
        (:server-id ts-ls :docker-server-id tsls-docker :server-command "typescript-language-server --stdio")))
  
  (require 'lsp-docker)
  (lsp-docker-init-clients
    :path-mappings '(("path-to-projects-you-want-to-use" . "/projects"))
    :client-packages lsp-docker-client-packages
    :client-configs lsp-docker-client-configs)
      

How it works

lsp-mode starts the image passed as :docker-image-id and mounts :path-mappings in the container. Then when the process is started lsp-mode translates the local paths to docker path and vice versa using the :path-mappings specified when calling lsp-docker-init-default-clients. You may use lsp-enabled-clients and lsp-disabled-clients to control what language server will be used to run for a particular project(refer to lsp-mode FAQ on how to configure .dir-locals).

emacslsp/lsp-docker-full

The container emacslsp/lsp-docker-full contains:

• The above language servers
• Emacs28 compiled with native JSON support for better performance.

Flags

Emacs

• Clone lsp-docker.

  git clone https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-docker
  cd lsp-docker
      

• Run

  bash start-emacs.sh
      

Spacemacs

• Clone lsp-docker.

  git clone https://github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-docker
  cd lsp-docker
      

• Clone spacemacs repo

  # Clone spacemacs develop
  git clone -b develop https://github.com/syl20bnr/spacemacs spacemacs
      

• Run

  EMACS_D_VOLUME=/path/to/spacemacs bash start-spacemacs.sh
      

Custom language server containers

You can use manually built language containers or images hosting language server(s), just follow a few simple rules (shown below).

Building a container (or an image):

You have 2 constraints:

• A language server must be launched in stdio mode (other types of communication are yet to be supported)
• A docker container (only container subtype, see the configuration below) must have your language server as an entrypoint (basically you have to be able to launch it with docker start -i <container_name> as it is launched this way with lsp-docker)

When you have sucessfully built a language server, you have to register it with either a configuration file or a .dir-locals file.

Registering a language server using a persistent configuration file:

A configuration file is a yaml file that is named .lsp-docker.yml or .lsp-docker.yaml and looks generally like this:

lsp:
  server:
    type: docker
    subtype: container # Or image. container subtype means launching an existing container
    # image subtype means creating a new container each time from a specified image
    name: not-significant-but-unique-name # Must be unique across all language servers
    server: server-id-of-the-base-server # Server id of a registered server (by lsp-mode) 
    launch_command: "launch command with arguments" # Launch command of the language server
    # (selected by a server id specified above) in stdio mode
    # Note: launch_command is not used with container subtype servers
    # as a command is embedded in a container itself and serves as an entrypoint
  mappings:
    - source: "/your/host/source/path"
      destination: "/your/local/path/inside/a/container"

Registering a language server using a .dir-locals file:

Just refer to the source code and general conventions of using .dir-locals. The variable you need is lsp-docker-persistent-default-config, its content is merged with the lsp section from a configuration file (if present).

Docker over TRAMP (TBD)

Docker running the language servers and hosting the sources, Emacs running on the desktop machine and connecting to docker instance over TRAMP.

See also

• docker - package for managing docker images/containers.

Maintainers

• yyoncho
• rnikoopour