What is a Language Server? Understanding the Language Server Protocol

The Language Server Protocol (LSP) facilitates communication between a tool (the client) and a language smartness provider (the server). This integration brings features like autocomplete, go to definition, and find all references directly into your preferred tool.

– Official Language Server Protocol Specification

The Language Server Protocol (LSP), pioneered by Microsoft, establishes a standardized communication method for programming language analyzers. Its aim is to enable seamless integration of rich language features across diverse development tools. Today, a consortium of industry leaders including Codenvy, Red Hat, and Sourcegraph, actively supports its advancement. The LSP ecosystem is experiencing rapid growth, with an expanding list of editors and language communities adopting the protocol. Below, you’ll find comprehensive details and links to current client and server implementations.

The Benefits of LSP

LSP revolutionizes language support by transforming the complex m-times-n problem into a simpler m-plus-n scenario. Traditionally, providing comprehensive language support for every programming language in every editor or IDE required developing individual plugins for each combination (e.g., a Python plugin for VSCode, a Python plugin for Sublime Text, a Python plugin for Vim, and so on).

Alt text: Illustration of the Matrix problem in software development, depicting a complex web of connections between different programming languages and code editors before LSP.

LSP offers a streamlined solution. Language communities can now concentrate their efforts on building a single, robust language server. This server, compatible with the LSP standard, can deliver advanced features such as code completion, hover tooltips, jump-to-definition, and find-references. Simultaneously, editor and client developers can focus on creating a unified, high-performance extension capable of communicating with any language server. This approach instantly provides deep language support across a multitude of tools.

Solving “The Matrix”: Language Servers and Clients

The traditional approach, often referred to as “The Matrix” due to its complex interconnections, is depicted below:

Programming Language	Emacs	Vim	VSCode	…
Go
Java
TypeScript
…

This matrix illustrates the multiplicative complexity. LSP simplifies this by introducing language servers and clients:

Alt text: Diagram illustrating the Language Server Protocol solution, showing a separation between language servers and code editor clients, simplifying language support.

Now, language servers are developed independently for each language:

Language Server
Go
Java
TypeScript
…

And clients are developed for each editor:

LSP Client
Emacs
Vim
VSCode
…

This decoupling drastically reduces complexity and fosters a more efficient ecosystem.

Current Language Server Implementations

LSP adoption is rapidly expanding. Refer to the tables below for the most up-to-date information on language server and client implementations.

Microsoft maintains a parallel list of language server implementations within the core LSP repository. This website complements Microsoft’s list by providing richer details about language server capabilities and LSP clients. It aims to inform users about the features they can expect when installing a new language server or client and to guide open-source contributors on areas needing support.

Inclusion Criteria:

To be included in this list, language servers and clients must meet the following qualifications:

1. Be fully open source.
2. Language servers must be editor-agnostic, and clients must be language-agnostic.
3. Implement at least one of the key methods listed below.

Key to Implementation Status:

Status	Meaning
	Implemented
WIP	Work in Progress
	Not implemented
	Not applicable

Language Server Implementations Table

Language	Maintainer	Repository	Code completion	Hover	Jump to def	Workspace symbols	Find references	Diagnostics	Additional capabilities
ActionScript3	Josh Tynjala	github.com/BowlerHatLLC/vscode-nextgenas/tree/master/language-server
Ada	AdaCore	github.com/AdaCore/ada_language_server
ANTLR	Ken Domino	github.com/kaby76/AntlrVSIX							Semantic highlighting, rename, reformat, refactoring, ANTLR 2/3/4, Bison, W3C EBNF
Apache Camel	Camel Tooling	github.com/camel-tooling/camel-language-server
Ballerina	ballerina.io	github.com/ballerina-platform/ballerina-lang/tree/master/language-server
Bash	Mads Hartmann	github.com/bash-lsp/bash-language-server
BibTeX	Andrew Pilsch	https://github.com/oncomouse/citation-langserver
C#	OmniSharp	github.com/OmniSharp/csharp-language-server-protocol							– Runs tests – Quick fixes – Debug profiles
C#	CXuesong	github.com/CXuesong/LanguageServer.NET
C#	Saulius Menkevičius	github.com/razzmatazz/csharp-language-server							– support for go-to-definition in metadata (on imported dlls)
C / C++	LLVM Team	clang-tools-extra/trunk/clangd
C / C++	Jacob Dufault	github.com/cquery-project/cquery
C / C++	MaskRay	github.com/MaskRay/ccls
Clojure	snoe	github.com/snoe/clojure-lsp
Common Workflow Language (CWL)	Seven Bridges/Rabix	Rabix/Benten							– Outline view – Javascript expression test evaluation – Preview of workflow graph – Preview of linked files
Coq	Coq LSP Team	coq-lsp							– Outline view – Extensions: info panel request, file progress notification, performance report
Cucumber (Gherkin)	Cucumber core team	cucumber/language-server							– Autocomplete steps – Go to step definition – Generate step definition from snippets – Syntax highlighting (semantic tokens) – Diagnostics for undefined steps – Formatting – Outline view
IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS	IBM	marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=IBM.zopeneditor							– Outline view – Previewing of included copybooks on hover – Navigate to copybooks – Code template snippets – Refactoring such as “rename symbol” – Variable completion
IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS	Broadcom	github.com/eclipse/che-che4z-lsp-for-cobol							– Automatic copybook resolution – Previewing of included copybooks on hover – COBOL Control Flow integration – Outline view – Code snippets support – Support for DB2, CICS and IDMS statements in Cobol – Subroutines support
CSS/LESS/SASS	Microsoft	github.com/Microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/css
CSS/LESS/SASS	DeltaEvo	github.com/vscode-langservers/vscode-css-languageserver-bin
D	WebFreak001	github.com/Pure-D/serve-d
Dart	Dart Team	github.com/dart-lang/sdk
Delphi	Embarcadero	Proprietary ( DelphiLSP)							– No arbitrary code execution 2 – Multi-process architecture
Deno	Deno Team	github.com/denoland/deno/tree/master/cli/lsp
Dockerfile	Remy Suen	github.com/rcjsuen/dockerfile-language-server-nodejs
DreamMaker	SpaceManiac	github.com/SpaceManiac/SpacemanDMM/tree/master/crates/dm-langserver
Erg	Shunsuke Shibayama and contributors	github.com/erg-lang/erg/tree/main/crates/els
Erlang	Erlang/OTPand Vlad Dumitrescu	github.com/erlang/sourcer
Erlang	Roberto Aloi, Juan Facorro and other contributors	github.com/erlang-ls/erlang_ls
Elixir	Elixir LSP	github.com/elixir-lsp/elixir-ls
Elm	Elm Tooling	github.com/elm-tooling/elm-language-server
F#	Ionide	github.com/fsharp/FsAutoComplete/
Fennel	XeroOl	git.sr.ht/~xerool/fennel-ls
fluent-bit	Seonghyeon Cho	github.com/sh-cho/fluent-bit-lsp
Flux	InfluxData	github.com/influxdata/flux-lsp
Fortran	Chris Hansen	github.com/hansec/fortran-language-server
Fuzion	Tokiwa Software GmbH	github.com/tokiwa-software/fuzion-lsp-server							Renaming, Outline, Signature Help
Gauge	Gauge	github.com/getgauge/gauge
Gleam	Louis Pilfold	github.com/gleam-lang/gleam
GLSL	Sven-Hendrik Haase	github.com/svenstaro/glsl-language-server
Go Archived	Sourcegraph	github.com/sourcegraph/go-langserver
Go	Go Team	github.com/golang/tools/tree/master/gopls
Grain	Grain Team	github.com/grain-lang/grain							Code formatting
GraphQL	GraphQL Foundation	github.com/graphql/graphiql
Groovy	Prominic	github.com/prominic/groovy-language-server
Groovy	Palantir	github.com/palantir/groovy-language-server
Groovy	VsCode Groovy Lint	github.com/nvuillam/vscode-groovy-lint/tree/master/server							Code Formatting Code refactoring (auto-fix errors)
Hack	HHVM Team	github.com/facebook/hhvm
Haskell	Haskell	https://github.com/haskell/haskell-language-server
Haxe	Haxe Foundation	github.com/vshaxe/haxe-language-server
Helm (Kubernetes)	qvalentin	github.com/mrjosh/helm-ls
IBM High Level Assembler	Broadcom	github.com/eclipse/che-che4z-lsp-for-hlasm
IBM High Level Assembler	IBM	marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=IBM.zopeneditor							– Outline view – Previewing of copybooks on hover – Navigate to copybooks
HTML	Microsoft	github.com/Microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/html
Imandra Protocol Language	Aesthetic Integration	https://github.com/AestheticIntegration/ipl-vscode
Java	Eclipse Foundation, Red Hat, Microsoft	github.com/eclipse/eclipse.jdt.ls
Java	georgewfraser	github.com/georgewfraser/vscode-javac
Java	Apache NetBeans	marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ASF.apache-netbeans-java							– Gradle, Maven, and mx support – Polyglot and Native Image debugging – OpenJDK sources support + jtreg
JavaScript	Typefox	github.com/theia-ide/typescript-language-server
JavaScript	quick-lint-js	github.com/quick-lint/quick-lint-js
JavaScript (Flow)	Flowtype	github.com/flowtype/flow-for-vscode
JSON	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/json-language-features/server
JSON Schema	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/vscode/tree/main/extensions/json-language-features/server
JSON-LD	Arthur Vercruysse	github.com/ajuvercr/jsonld-lsp
Jsonnet	Grafana Labs	github.com/grafana/jsonnet-language-server
JS/TS + PHP + Python + Java	SonarSource	github.com/SonarSource/sonarlint-language-server
Julia	David Anthoff	github.com/JuliaEditorSupport/LanguageServer.jl
Kotlin	fwcd	github.com/fwcd/KotlinLanguageServer
Langium	TypeFox	github.com/langium/langium							Tool for implementing a language server in any language
LanguageTool	Julian Valentin	github.com/valentjn/ltex-ls							Checking spelling and grammar in markup languages such as LaTeX, Markdown, XHTML, …
LaTeX	Eric Förster	github.com/efoerster/texlab
Lua	Alloyed	github.com/Alloyed/lua-lsp
Lua	tangzx	github.com/EmmyLua/EmmyLua-LanguageServer
Lua	LuaLS	github.com/LuaLS/lua-language-server
Markdown	Artem Pianykh	github.com/artempyanykh/marksman							– Support for wiki-links – Table of Contents generation – Single-file mode
MOCA	Danny Glass	github.com/mrglassdanny/moca-language-server							Formatting, Semantic Highlighting, Signature Help, MOCA Client Capabilities
Nextflow	Seqera	github.com/nextflow-io/language-server							Formatting, rename, semantic highlighting, visualization of code as workflow diagrams
Odin	Daniel Gavin	https://github.com/DanielGavin/ols
OCaml	OCaml	github.com/ocaml/ocaml-lsp
Nim	PMunch	github.com/PMunch/nimlsp
openVALIDATION	openVALIDATION	github.com/openvalidation/ov-language-server
Perl	Gerald Richter	github.com/richterger/Perl-LanguageServer							– Installable via CPAN – https://metacpan.org/pod/Perl::LanguageServer – Implements Debug Adaptor Protocol
Perl	Brian Scannell	github.com/bscan/PerlNavigator							– No external dependencies
PHP	Felix Becker	github.com/felixfbecker/php-language-server
PHP	Dan Leech	github.com/phpactor/phpactor							– No arbitrary code execution 2 – Code Action – Document Highlight – Goto Implementation – Document Symbol – Has custom extensions
PHP	Tom Gerrits	gitlab.com/Serenata/Serenata							– No arbitrary code execution 2 – Has custom extensions
PHP	Hvy Industries	github.com/HvyIndustries/crane/blob/master/server
PHP	Matt Brown	github.com/vimeo/psalm
IBM Enterprise PL/I for z/OS	IBM	marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=IBM.zopeneditor							– Outline view – Previewing of include files on hover – Navigate to include files – Refactoring such as “rename symbol” – Variable completion
Polyglot (Java, JavaScript, Python, R, Ruby, …)	GraalVM	marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=oracle-labs-graalvm.graalvm							– Supports polyglot programming – Based on dynamic run-time data – Supports delegation to other language servers
PowerShell	Microsoft	github.com/PowerShell/PowerShellEditorServices
Puppet	Lingua Pupuli	github.com/lingua-pupuli/puppet-editor-services
PureScript	Nicholas Wolverson	github.com/nwolverson/purescript-language-server
Python	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/pyright
Python Archived	Microsoft	github.com/Microsoft/python-language-server
Python Archived	Sourcegraph	https://github.com/sourcegraph/python-langserver
Python	python-lsp	github.com/python-lsp/python-lsp-server
Python	Samuel Roeca	github.com/pappasam/jedi-language-server
Q# Archived	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/qsharp-compiler
R	REditorSupport	github.com/REditorSupport/languageserver							Code Formatting
Racket	Conor Finegan	github.com/jeapostrophe/racket-langserver
Raku	Brian Scannell	github.com/bscan/RakuNavigator
Red	bitbegin	github.com/bitbegin/redlangserver
reStructuredText	swyddfa	github.com/swyddfa/esbonio
Rego	Styra	github.com/StyraInc/regal							Goto Definition Request, Code Actions, Folding Range, Formatting, Inlay Hints
Rell	ChromaWay	gitlab.com/chromaway/core-tools/rell-toolbox/							Goto Definition, Code Actions, Code Formatting, Signature Help, Rename, Semantic highlighting, Outline view
Robot Framework	Robocorp	github.com/robocorp/robotframework-lsp							Code Formatting
Ruby	Fred Snyder	github.com/castwide/solargraph
Ruby	Shopify	github.com/Shopify/ruby-lsp
Rust Archived	Nick Cameron and the Rust community	github.com/rust-lang/rls
Rust	Aleksey Kladov and contributors	github.com/rust-analyzer/rust-analyzer
Scala	Iulian Dragos	github.com/dragos/dragos-vscode-scala
Scala	Scalameta	github.com/scalameta/metals
SPARQL	Stardog Union	github.com/stardog-union/stardog-language-servers/tree/master/packages/sparql-language-server
Smalltalk/Pharo	Benoît Verhaeghe	github.com/badetitou/Pharo-LanguageServer							Code Formatting, Signature Help
Snyk	Snyk	https://github.com/snyk/snyk-ls							Automatic download of Snyk CLI with custom notification of path to binary, diagnostic workspace scans over all workspace folders on startup. Supports Snyk Code, Snyk IaC and Snyk Open Source. Authentication to Snyk is supported and token returned via custom notification.
Standard ML	Ariel Davis	Millet							Code formatting
Swift & C-family	Apple Inc	github.com/apple/sourcekit-lsp
Systemtap	Red Hat	Systemtap LSP
SystemVerilog	dalance	github.com/dalance/svls
Terraform	Julio Tain Sueiras	github.com/juliosueiras/terraform-lsp							– Dynamic completion from provider binary
Terraform	Hashicorp	github.com/hashicorp/terraform-ls
TTCN-3	Nokia	github.com/nokia/ntt
Turtle	Stardog Union	github.com/stardog-union/stardog-language-servers/tree/master/packages/turtle-language-server
TypeScript	TypeFox	github.com/theia-ide/typescript-language-server
V	vlang	https://github.com/vlang/v-analyzer
Vala	vala-lang	https://github.com/vala-lang/vala-language-server
Veryl	dalance	github.com/dalance/veryl/tree/master/crates/languageserver							Formatting, Semantic highlighting
VimScript	iamcco	github.com/iamcco/vim-language-server
XML	IBM	github.com/microclimate-devops/xml-language-server
XML	Red Hat and Angelo ZERR	github.com/angelozerr/lsp4xml							XML Schema validation/completion, Foldings, Rename element, Formatting, Document Link, Extensible to add custom completion, hover, etc
YAML	Red Hat	github.com/redhat-developer/yaml-language-server
YANG	TypeFox	github.com/yang-tools/yang-lsp
Xtext (Any Language)	TypeFox	github.com/eclipse/xtext-core
Work in Progress
Crystal Archived	Ryan L. Bell and contributors	github.com/crystal-lang-tools/scry
PlantUML	Patrick Dewey	github.com/ptdewey/plantuml-lsp
reStructuredText Archived	Lex Li	github.com/lextm/restructuredtext-antlr
Ruby	Fumiaki MATSUSHIMA	github.com/mtsmfm/language_server-ruby
TypeCobol	TypeCobol Team	TypeCobol Language Server
WebAssembly Archived	Darin Morrison	github.com/wasm-lsp/wasm-language-server
Zig	zigtools and contributors	github.com/zigtools/zls

Notes:

Automatic dependency management Language servers that support this feature are able to resolve / install a project’s 3rd-party dependencies without the need for a user to manually intervene. No arbitrary code execution Language servers that support this feature don’t execute arbitrary code (some language servers do this when running build scripts, analyzing the project, etc.). Tree View Protocol Language servers that support this feature are able to render tree views. See this link for more information. Decoration Protocol Language servers that support this feature are able to provide text to be displayed as “non-editable” text in the text editor. See this link for more information.

LSP Clients Table

Editor/client	Maintainer	Repository	Code completion	Hover	Jump to def	Find references	Symbol search	Diagnostics
Acme	Fazlul Shahriar	https://github.com/fhs/acme-lsp
BBEdit	Bare Bones Software, Inc.	Proprietary
C++Builder	Embarcadero	Proprietary
Delphi	Embarcadero	Proprietary
Eclipse LSP4E	Eclipse	github.com/eclipse/lsp4e/
Eclipse Che	Eclipse, Codenvy	github.com/eclipse/che/
Emacs	Vibhav Pant	github.com/emacs-lsp/lsp-mode
Emacs	João Távora	github.com/joaotavora/eglot
Emacs	Andy Stewart	github.com/manateelazycat/lsp-bridge
Geany	Jiří Techet	github.com/techee/geany-lsp
GNATStudio	AdaCore	https://github.com/AdaCore/gps
Helix	Blaž Hrastnik	https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
IntelliJ / JetBrains IDEs	Ballerina-Lang Team	github.com/ballerina-platform/lsp4intellij
IntelliJ / JetBrains IDEs	Guillaume Tâche	github.com/gtache/intellij-lsp
Kakoune	Ruslan Prokopchuk	github.com/ul/kak-lsp
Kate	Kate Team	invent.kde.org/kde/kate
Moonshine IDE	Prominic	github.com/prominic/Moonshine-IDE
Oni	Oni	github.com/onivim/oni
Qt Creator	Qt Project	code.qt.io/cgit/qt-creator
VSCode	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/VSCode
multilspy	Microsoft	github.com/microsoft/monitors4codegen
vim	Yegappan Lakshmanan	github.com/yegappan/lsp
Neovim	Neovim Team	github.com/neovim/neovim
vim/neovim	Nate Bosch	github.com/natebosch/vim-lsc
vim/neovim	Prabir Shrestha	github.com/prabirshrestha/vim-lsp
vim/neovim	Junfeng Li	github.com/autozimu/LanguageClient-neovim
vim/neovim	w0rp	github.com/w0rp/ale
vim/neovim	Qiming zhao	github.com/neoclide/coc.nvim
Sublime Text	Tom van Ommeren	github.com/sublimelsp/LSP
MS Monaco Editor	TypeFox	github.com/TypeFox/monaco-languageclient
Work in progress
Atom	GitHub	github.com/atom-community/atom-languageclient
CodeMirror	Wylie Conlon	github.com/wylieconlon/lsp-editor-adapter
CodeMirror 6	Mahmud Ridwan	github.com/FurqanSoftware/codemirror-languageserver
Emacs	Corey Richardson	github.com/sourcegraph/emacs-lsp
Sublime	Sourcegraph	github.com/sourcegraph/sublime-lsp
Theia	Theia IDE	github.com/theia-ide/theia
Spyder IDE	Spyder IDE Dev Team	github.com/spyder-ide/spyder
Ycmd	Ycmd team	github.com/Valloric/ycmd
Brackets	Adobe	github.com/adobe/brackets
JupyterLab	Michał Krassowski	krassowski/jupyterlab-lsp
Rapunzel	Sebastiaan Mathôt	opensesame-extension-language_server

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