Bioinformatics is what I officially do for a living nowadays, along web dev – yes, those pretty little command-line tools are often better served using a Bootstrap-based Flask or Django framework, you know. Bioinformatics is cool, but it takes as much time as running a multi-level Bayesian IRT model, especially on those low cost servers we got at the University. Today I decided to enjoy my free time while processing several tasks in parallel in the background (read mapping and genome assembly) and to dive into my Neovim config.

I removed a few unused packages, as usual. I tried a few other ones, because why not. The most surprising finding was that the successor of ‘hrsh7th/nvim-compe’ (now defunct), which is what I use as a basic completion engine for all things related to LSP, buffer and command-line management, is nvim-cmp. It is maintained by the same author but this plugin is just asking us to install a ton of additional plugins (e.g., one for LSP stuff, one for buffer, one for : stuff, and so on). I can understand why (one target, one package), but I find it weird that we can’t get a unified UI for things like completion. After all, we only have to manage one package to get all LSP settings, isn’t it? Anyway, I tried this approach and just gave up: too much noise (why do we need to enable a snippet engine system, even if we don’t need one, BTW?), not that many improvements over my bare use of completion needs. I reverted back to nvim-compe.

Later on, I wanted to test my c/c++ config more extensively, with two prerequisites: It should rely on clang-based workflow, and it should support both standard Makefile (for C) and CMake (for C and C++, but since I don’t do C++ the later is mostly to ensure that I can compile others’ codebase).

I came across a lot of posts dealing with how to setup Vim or Neovim and LSP/Clangd. I already had the bare config for ’neovim/nvim-lspconfig’, which is (mostly):

local nvim_lsp = require('lspconfig')

local on_attach = function(client, bufnr)
  local function buf_set_keymap(...) vim.api.nvim_buf_set_keymap(bufnr, ...) end
  local function buf_set_option(...) vim.api.nvim_buf_set_option(bufnr, ...) end

  buf_set_option('omnifunc', 'v:lua.vim.lsp.omnifunc')

  local opts = {noremap=true, silent=true}

  buf_set_keymap("n", "<localleader>w=", "<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.formatting_sync(nil, 100)<CR>", opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wa', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.code_action()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wd', '<cmd>lua vim.diagnostic.open_float(buffer, {scope="line"})<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wl', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.codelens.refresh()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wL', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.codelens.run()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>ws', '<cmd>Telescope lsp_document_symbols<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wS', '<cmd>Telescope lsp_workspace_symbols<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wr', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.references()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '<localleader>wq', '<cmd>lua vim.diagnostic.setqflist()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'K', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.hover()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('i', '<C-h>', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.signature_help()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', '[d', '<cmd>lua vim.diagnostic.goto_prev()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', ']d', '<cmd>lua vim.diagnostic.goto_next()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gD', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.declaration()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gd', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.definition()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gr', '<cmd>Telescope lsp_references<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gR', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.rename()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gi', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.implementation()<CR>', opts)
  buf_set_keymap('n', 'gy', '<cmd>lua vim.lsp.buf.type_definition()<CR>', opts)
end

local servers = {
  "pylsp", "clangd", "hls", "r_language_server",
  "racket_langserver", "clojure_lsp", "tsserver",
  "julials", "rust_analyzer", "purescriptls", "quick_lint_js"
}

for _, lsp in ipairs(servers) do
  nvim_lsp[lsp].setup {
    on_attach = on_attach,
    flags = {debounce_text_changes = 150}
  }
end

And, that’s it: As I said in a previous post, the built-in LSP tools together with a few well crafted package usually make my day. I mean, I get all the things we usually need form an IDE: diagnostics, goto definition/references, and so on. And with the progress of code actions, at least in Rust, C and Haskell, we will soon get powerful refactoring tools. Now, what additional packages are useful in the context of LSP/Clangd. Well, clangd-extensions comes to the rescue, especially by adding inlay hints (you’ll need Clang-13 at least), type hierarchy and AST, and more.

Regarding Makefile and CMake, I rely on bare Vim config in after/ftplugin/c.vim, namely:

compiler gcc
set makeprg=cd\ build\ &&\ cmake\ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=debug\ -DCMAKE_EXPORT_COMPILE_COMMANDS=1\ ..\ &&\ cmake\ --build\ .

autocmd QuickFixCmdPost [^l]* nested cwindow
autocmd QuickFixCmdPost    l* nested lwindow

nmap gZ :10 split term://zig cc % && ./a.out<cr>

I use make in case I’m working with CMake (this assumes there’s a already a build directory that was defined beforehand; and you’ll need to link the compile_command.json file at the root directory). For standard Makefile-based project, I use :!make from Vim command prompt. Lastly, I tend to use the same mapping, gZ, across multiples langauges to just fire a quick terminal and run the program.