Technique language support for the Zed Editor

This repository contains machinery for syntax highlighting and syntax checking for Technique files in the Zed Editor in the form of a language extension which contains the extension's configuration, a Tree Sitter grammar, appropriate metadata to detect the file type, and the machinery to download and install the language server.

The Tree Sitter grammar here is referenced by Git URL and commit hash from technique-lang/tree-sitter-technique. Note that that grammar is not a complete parser to a full abstract syntax tree; rather its only requirement is to produce tokens for the purpose of syntax highlighting a Technique file in the Zed Editor.

This repository also contains the machinery to download and run the Technique language server which provides locations of parser errors back to the editor.

Features

Symbol Search:

Searching for symbols will match in procedure names, procedure titles, and signatures.

Document Structure in Outline:

The structure of the Technique document you are writing is visible in the Outline.

Syntax Highlighting

Technique source is syntax highlighted in the editor.

Error reporting

If errors are detected by the compiler they are reported on the "Project Diagnostics" page.

Enabling

You can obtain this extension from the central Zed Extensions repository by searching for technique on the Zed Extensions page or in the "Extensions" tab in the Zed Editor.

If you want to run the extension from the repository you can install this extension by likewise opening the "Extensions" tab in the Zed Editor (<Ctrl>+<Shift>+X on Linux) but instead selecting "Install Dev Extension".

Syntax Highlighting Colours

You will also want to set the colours used when syntax highlighting. This isn't directly supported by Zed, but by adding entries under the "experimental.theme_overrides" key in your settings.json you can have Zed use the correct colours for Technique files. This works as all the mappings in languages/technique/highlights.scm are marked as being function.technique or punctuation.bracket.technique giving us a unique string to match on in the user settings so that we don't corrupt normal theme-driven highlighting for other file types.

  "experimental.theme_overrides": {
    "syntax": {
      // Declaration
      "constructor.technique": {
        "color": "#3465a4",
        "font_weight": 700
      },

and so on. A suitable "experimental.theme_overrides" value is in config/settings.json-sample and can be copied from there into your user settings.

Developing

This extension will download and decompress a released build of the technique binary to invoke as the Language Server Protocol server. If, however, you are testing changes to the LSP service you can instead override the location of the binary in your settings.json file to point at the one you are building locally, for example:

  "lsp": {
    "technique": {
      "binary": {
        "path": "/home/andrew/src/technique-lang/technique/target/debug/technique",
        "arguments": ["language"],
      }
    },