Development

Setting up development environment

A demo of the setup can be found on youtube.

It is recommended to work on the forked copy of this repository from your github account to raise pull requests.

git clone git@github.com:<your-github-id>/ansible-language-server.git
cd ansible-language-server
git remote add upstream git@github.com:ansible/ansible-language-server.git
git fetch --all
git checkout -b <name_of_branch> upstream/main

Running & debugging the language-server with VS Code

Install dependent packages within ansible-language-server root directory

ansible-language-server$ npm install .

This will install the dependent modules under node_modules folder within the current directory.

Clone the repository containing the VS Code extension code into the vscode-ansible directory next to the root directory of this repository.

cd ..
git clone git@github.com:ansible/vscode-ansible.git
cd vscode-ansible

Open a new VS Code window and add folder to workspace File -> Add folder to workspace and add vscode-ansible and ansible-language-server folders to the workspace
Once the language server and vscode-ansible/ directory is prepared, compile both client and server using command

npm run compile-withserver

In the Run and debug window select Client + Server (source) configuration and start debugging Run -> Start Debugging. This will open up a new VS Code window which is the Extension development Host window.
In the Extension development Host window add a new folder that has ansible files.
You can set the ansible-language-server settings by adding .vscode/settings.json file under the root folder. Example settings:

{
  "ansible.python.interpreterPath": "<change to python3 executable path>",
  "ansible.ansible.path": "<change to ansible executable path>",
  "ansibleServer.trace.server": "verbose"
}

Cleaning the output

If you hit an odd compilation or debugger problem, don’t hesitate to clean the output directory by running npm run clean under the vscode-ansible folder. You should also run it whenever you are switching between debug/compilation modes.

Building server locally

Install prerequisites:
- latest Visual Studio Code
- Node.js v12.0.0 or higher
Fork and clone this repository
Install the dependencies
```
cd ansible-language-server
npm ci
```
Build the language server
```
npm run compile
```
The newly built server is now located in ./out/server/src/server.js.
```
node ./out/server/src/server.js --stdio
```