Language server

<!-- Part of the Carbon Language project, under the Apache License v2.0 with LLVM Exceptions. See /LICENSE for license information. SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception -->

Introduction

This skill covers toolchain/language_server/, which implements carbon language-server, and utils/vscode/, the VS Code extension that launches it.

Architecture

The server is built on clangd's LSP transport (clang::clangd), not on a Carbon-specific one. That means clangd's Protocol.h types (Position, Range, Location, Hover, MarkupContent) are the interface currency.

• server.cpp / incoming_messages.cpp: message dispatch. A handler must be registered in incoming_messages.cpp before it can be called.
• handle_*.cpp: one file per request family, each declaring its entry point in handle.h.
• handle_initialize.cpp: the advertised capabilities. Adding a capability changes Content-Length in every test that calls initialize, so expect a large autoupdate diff.
• context.h / context.cpp: Context::File per open document, plus the compile driver. Context::File::unit() has a CARBON_CHECK on the compile driver, so any handler that reaches for the parse tree must first rule out documents that were never compiled.
• position.h, sem_ir_index.h: mapping source positions to SemIR instructions for real Carbon files.
• sem_ir_text.h, handle_sem_ir_text.h: navigation within the formatted SemIR in a test file's // CHECK:STDOUT: lines. This is a heuristic text index, deliberately independent of the real SemIR data structures. See the SemIR text reader.

Document kinds

The server handles two kinds of document, distinguished by the languageId from textDocument/didOpen, with a content sniff as a fallback:

• carbon: a real Carbon file. Compiled; diagnostics published.
• carbon-testdata: a test file. Not compiled, because we lack logic to split it into one file per // --- split marker.

[!IMPORTANT] A handler that assumes every file was compiled will crash on a test file. When adding one, give the test-file path an explicit early return.

Tests

There is no language-server-specific test target. toolchain/language_server/BUILD only declares filegroup(name = "testdata"), which is pulled into //toolchain/testing:all_testdata and run by //toolchain/testing:file_test.

# Run just the language server tests (or any subset).
bazelisk test //toolchain/testing:file_test \
    --test_arg=--file_tests=toolchain/language_server/testdata/position/hover_and_goto.carbon

# See the raw output, which is much easier to read than a test failure.
bazelisk run //toolchain/testing:file_test -- --dump_output \
    --file_tests=toolchain/language_server/testdata/position/hover_and_goto.carbon

# Update expectations. Never hand-write CHECK lines.
./toolchain/autoupdate_testdata.py toolchain/language_server/testdata/...

These tests run serially, because clangd's logging is a global singleton.

Test file shape

The request stream is a // --- STDIN split written with the [[@LSP-*]] keywords, and the responses land in a trailing // --- AUTOUPDATE-SPLIT. Documents come from other splits by way of "text": "FROM_FILE_SPLIT", which is substituted with the content of the split whose name matches the uri.

// --- position.carbon
fn Abs(n: i32) -> i32 { return n; }

// --- STDIN
[[@LSP-CALL:initialize:"capabilities": {}]]
[[@LSP-NOTIFY:textDocument/didOpen:
  "textDocument": {
    "uri": "file:/position.carbon",
    "languageId": "carbon",
    "text": "FROM_FILE_SPLIT"
  }
]]
[[@LSP-CALL:textDocument/hover:
  "textDocument": {"uri": "file:/position.carbon"},
  "position": {"line": 0, "character": 3}
]]
[[@LSP-CALL:shutdown]]
[[@LSP-NOTIFY:exit]]

// --- AUTOUPDATE-SPLIT

Full keyword documentation is in testing/file_test/README.md.

Traps

[!WARNING] A blank line inside the STDIN split breaks the JSON transport. It terminates a header block, so clangd logs a timestamped Warning: Missing Content-Length header, or zero-length message. The timestamp makes the test unreproducible, so it fails on the next run. Comment lines between messages are fine; blank lines are not. A single blank line immediately before // --- AUTOUPDATE-SPLIT is also fine.

Other things worth knowing:

• positionEncoding is UTF-16. A character is a UTF-16 code unit offset, not a byte offset.
• Line and character numbers in requests are 0-based, while the locN_M suffixes in SemIR output are 1-based. Off-by-ones here are silent: the request succeeds and returns the wrong thing.
• A split can hold a document that itself contains // CHECK:STDOUT: lines, because CHECK lines only form expectations inside the AUTOUPDATE-SPLIT. Such a document still can't contain a literal // --- line, which would split the enclosing test file; write it as [[@0x2f]]/ --- name.carbon.

The SemIR text reader

sem_ir_text.cpp indexes the formatted SemIR inside a test file's // CHECK:STDOUT: lines so that hover and go-to-definition work on operand names. It is a heuristic reader, not a parser, and its correctness rests on facts about toolchain/sem_ir/formatter.cpp and toolchain/sem_ir/inst_namer.cpp. Re-check these if the formatter changes:

• There are exactly four scope keywords: file, generated, imports, and constants (InstNamer::GetScopeName). Everything else is @entityname.
• A reference is %name within its own scope and scope.%name otherwise (InstNamer::GetNameFor). Names may contain . and may start with one, as in %.Self.frozen.
• Type annotations are printed in the constants scope. Formatter::FormatTypeOfInst does llvm::SaveAndRestore file_scope(scope_, InstNamer::ScopeId::Constants), so in %x: %foo = ... a bare %foo means constants.%foo. This does not apply to ordinary operands or to [concrete = ...] annotations.
• *_decl braces hold the declared entity's scope. The braces of %F.decl: ... = fn_decl @F [...] { ... } { ... } are lexically inside file { }, but their names belong to @F.
• !with Self: switches scope without a brace, until !members: switches it back. Brace counting alone cannot see this.
• A specific @F(args) { } block uses @F's scope and defines nothing; each %name => value row references an instruction of the generic.

Validating a change to the reader

The unit tests only cover a handful of cases. To check a change against the real corpus, drive the server over a sample of check testdata, hovering on every %name, and compare the resolved fraction before and after. Roughly 99% of names resolve; the residue are names the formatter references but never emits a definition line for, such as %I.WithSelf.F, which only ever appears inside a [symbolic = ...] annotation.

Two things to get right in such a harness:

• Feed the request stream from a file, not a pipe. The server reads stdin as a file and reports error: Input/output error on a pipe.
• Read the output as bytes. Python's text=True rewrites the \r\n framing, and Content-Length counts bytes.

VS Code extension

utils/vscode/ declares three languages in package.json:

Language id	Applies to
carbon	*.carbon
carbon-testdata	**/testdata/**/*.carbon
semir	*.semir

[!NOTE] The TextMate scope for SemIR is source.carbon-semir, but the language id is semir. Markdown code fences in hover text resolve language ids, so a fence must say ```semir.

extension.ts launches the server over stdio, using the carbonPath setting (default ./bazel-bin/toolchain/carbon). Its documentSelector controls which files are sent to the server at all; a new document kind has to be added there as well as in the server.