Bundle or improve the nimlangserver installation about vscode-nim HOT 31 CLOSED

Counterpoint: It's possible to bundle platform-specific binaries by providing platform-specific VSIX files:
https://code.visualstudio.com/api/working-with-extensions/publishing-extension#platformspecific-extensions

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And how would that better ux/feedback look like? A console window showing nimble downloading and compiling stuff?

the go extension for example creates a separate output window (for all the "magic" it does in the background, regardless of what that might be):

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Do you want (and do you have time) to work on these things?

I can do it but I have to work on some nimble issues first. I would start with changing the installation to be local to the extension and providing better feedback as it's a smaller change than to deal with the binaries and automatise releases.

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My impression is that most extensions for the mainstream languages use the package manager of the particular language to install the language server binary. I suspect this is done because managing binaries in the extension is difficult in practice.

This technique doesn't prevent version pinning and forced upgrades if the package manager is capable enough (which Nimble should be).

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Even though we need to make a decision, there is no need to block the first release because of this.

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Counterpoint: It's possible to bundle platform-specific binaries by providing platform-specific VSIX files:

it is also possible to bundle all binaries in a single vsix and choose a binary at runtime, which might be a more simple process

that said, many extensions download their deps instead of bundling (ie not using the package manager) - here's a simple example: https://github.com/haskell/vscode-haskell/blob/b14b3735d4582de485342cc8f5c51b2892caea5b/src/hlsBinaries.ts#L145-L162

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bundling a binary for the current platform only:
pros:
+ fast - no need to wait for a download or compilation
+ extension binary is small, as we need to ship just one binary for the current platform
+ no need to worry about user's build tools and nimble version
+ no need to worry about the server hosting the binaries going down, or about user's internet connection going down
+ no need to worry about compilation errors (these can be difficult to troubleshoot for the user)
+ no need to worry about user having an old nimlangserver installation (we can default to using the nimlangserver, shipped with the extension, unless the user specifically chooses to use a different location, or to search in PATH via new config options, which can disabled by default)
+ can streamline language server updates via the VS code extension update mechanism. VS Code already provides GUI for showing when a new version of an extension is available. Users can view the changelog, they can decide when to install it, etc. It's the same GUI users use for all extensions.
cons:
- need to compile binaries for each supported OS
- need to build and upload a separate .vsix for each platform

bundling binaries for all platforms:
pros:
+ only one .vsix package is needed
+ all of the pros for bundling binary for a single platform, except:
- extension binary will not be as small (estimated zipped size = 600kb + number_of_platforms*600kb)
cons:
- still need to compile binaries for each supported OS
- need to implement platform detection code and logic for choosing the right binary in the vscode-nim extension

downloading a binary:
pros:
+ only one .vsix package is needed
+ still no need to worry about build tools, nimble versions and compilation errors
cons:
- it's possible for the server to go down, or for user's internet connection to go down
- need to write extra code for downloading, including network error handling
- need to write extra code for checking for updates and updating the language server. This will need GUI code, because many users will prefer to be asked, before an update is installed.

nimble install:
pros:
+ only one .vsix package is needed
+ no need to ship any binaries
+ the compiler should generate a working binary for any supported OS
+ already implemented
cons:
- slow. Takes time to compile the binary, while the user sees no visual feedback.
- dependant on user's nimble version and various other tools in their PATH
- currently, the server is never updated, so we need to write extra code for updating the server
- if compilation fails, troubleshooting can be very difficult for the user

Overall, I think "bundling a binary for the current platform only" provides the best user experience, so I vote for that.

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i'm all for @nickysn's suggestion "bundling a binary for the
current platform only" , this would be the best user experience 🙂

in the meantime it would be great if ready compiled
nimlangserver binaries ( at least for the bigger platforms )
could be provided as downloads .

suggestion posted : nim-lang/langserver#92

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On how to bundle maximally compatible binaries that don't depend on distro specifics: #46 (comment)

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We also can't and don't want to support every distro with a single binary,

We can and it's simple: by not depending on libpcre3 at all and linking libc statically, like modern distribution environments usually do (musl + native nim re engine)

That would probably work on most distros, however it will still fail on some of the more weird ones, such as NixOS (https://nixos.wiki/wiki/Packaging/Binaries), so it still doesn't cover all distros.

or by using wasm which is shipped with vscode and doesn't have these problems to begin with.
How much work is it to make nimlangserver run on the WebAssembly platform and integrate it with VS Code? Is VS Code ready to use an LSP server, compiled for the WASI platform, that uses stdio for communication? How do we deal with the fact that nimlangserver uses threads and multithreading on the WASI platform isn't defined, and the thread and atomics proposal for WebAssembly is very experimental at this point? How do we deal with the fact that nimlangserver needs to start nimsuggest processes from WebAssembly and communicate with them over sockets? Does the WASI platform support that, or do we have to write all this glue code all by ourselves in the VS code extension that is compiled to JavaScript?

Notably, this is also why vscode doesn't rely on distro package managers to ship extensions - it's messy.
That's probably part of the reason, but not entirely. It's because Microsoft wants to control the extensions marketplace. It's also more convenient that way, because the entire thing is written in JavaScript, so it's sandboxed. It's a little bit like the Firefox extensions. Firefox is shipped by most distributes with the distro package manager, however the extensions are installed locally by the browser. However, don't forget that some major parts are installed via the distro package manager, this includes VS Code itself (they ship an .rpm and .deb), as well as most of the actual compilers and tools used (gcc, gdb, lldb, etc.)

ie understand that the distro package management model is difficult to maintain, which is why modern development systems tend to rely on other methodologies (go has its own static runtime, flatpak and docker are used to avoid distro packaging and gain distro-independence etc etc) - you're describing a solution to a self-inflicted problem.

No, it's not difficult to maintain, it's easy to maintain, because the distro packagers do the work for you. And they update your libraries, when they have security vulnerabilities. Surely, there's a downside - it's slow. That's why language package managers exist, because developers want to use the latest, greatest bleeding edge libraries, and when they find a bug in a library, they don't want to wait 3 years, until the fixed version of the library gets into Debian stable. Developers also prefer more fine grained control over their libraries, because they use fast evolving code, with an unstable API, that breaks their code when you change versions of libraries. So, there's really two different worlds - there's the world of the language package managers, where there's the convenience and speed of having a huge selection of libraries, that are evolving at a very rapid rate. And there's the world of the distro package managers, where you have the stability and security of a curated, maintained set of packages. So, different worlds, different goals, different advantages and disadvantages.

So, where's this heading? Eventually, nimlangserver is going to become stable and it'll be shipped by most distributions. In fact, it's starting to happen right now with the 1.2.0 release.

Why the whole rant? You're thinking fast and bleeding edge. And that's where we're at right now. But eventually, we're heading towards slow and stable. In fact, there's not much going on in the language server - the LSP protocol is stable, and most of the real work is done in nimsuggest, so it's only a thin layer, that will become stable soon - sooner than expected. On the other hand, Linux ABI breakages will probably continue, so I'm thinking long term (years from now) to rely on the distro package managers to provide a more stable version, rather than shipping a binary. On Windows and macOS it's quite the opposite - I think there the best option is to bundle a binary with the extension and use it by default. On Linux - also ship a binary, but maybe use whatever comes first in the path? But what if there's an outdated version installed via nimble in ~/.nimble/bin? I guess the real question is, which version to use, if there are several versions installed on the computer.

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Hey, it's Sunday, we're allowed to rant ;)

it's slow.

Slow is not where the inefficiency comes from: the increased complexity lies in having to maintain compatibility across version boundaries (aka "having options") - when you know that extension and langserver are the same version, you have a fundamentally more simple problem to manage because one determines the other and there's no friction and version compatibility issues between them - you're able to, like in the case we're discussing, remove the complexity of (mostly meaningless) options and choices that otherwise cause unnecessary maintenance. This is why bundling a binary is easier to deal with: fewer moving parts.

The distro argument is exactly the same: either you have to deal with vscode version, extension version, nimlangserver version and distro/libpcre version - or you can remove the last two and have an objectively more simple product - both as a user and as a developer having to support it.

The complexity of managing a distro and its versioning mismatches when managing a "product" or application come at a cost - it is this cost that in a very darwinian way mostly has obsoleted distros with users having migrated to docker and similar "containerised" or isolated solutions for applications, leaving distros with the responsibility to ship base libraries to bootstrap the system but not much else.

Some hold on to the distro, because it does indeed have some advantages but it turns out that the "upgrade library for security reasons" happens far more rarely than "upgrade library breaks the application" or "library is missing, my binary is not working" and the outcome is that ecosystems like vscode, firefox, go, rust, javascript etc have moved away from that model.

Even if there's an argument to be had that security fixes are important, the ongoing cost of having to deal with mundane failures is still higher - at the end of the day. When there's a security fix, the application will get updated as well because that's where the majority of users are. That nix would ship a security update to a library faster than a widely used application would release a patch is simply neither realistic nor real at this stage (yes, I'm sure some 10-year-old counter-example exists but ..).

Coming back to this issue, we're targeting vscode and the absolutely most simple thing for the extension is to support one version, and one version only and the (interim) solution (while the binary distribution is being worked on) is to make a PR that makes sure that the "local nimble install" option is used for it (or that a binary is downloaded without involving nimble).

nimlangserver will keep evolving because lsp as a whole is evolving together with vscode, as is nim - indeed, it is because the evolution is mostly driven by vscode (which drives lsp development) that tying nimlangserver to the extension makes sense. Every such time it evolves, you can either relive the distro version mismatch, with its maintainer having gone on vacation or moved on to a different problem, or you can remove the distro from the equation entirely.

? But what if there's an outdated version installed via nimble in ~/.nimble/bin? I guess the real question is, which version to use, if there are several versions installed on the computer.

This is very simple: use the binary built by the extension which lives in its own local folder using the options in nimble that already exist for this purpose. If someone is special and wants to use a different binary, they can copy the binary there.

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Long discussion. Surely, @arnetheduck loves to debate. Let's skip the offtopic and focus on solutions. Do we all agree to ship a platform-specific binary with the extension, instead of using nimble (even if it's a nimble "local" install)? If yes, let's start from there.

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Im not sure about it but dont have strong opinions on it neither. Another pro that it has besides the one you mentioned:

• it doesnt require an update of the extension to update the langserver.

Also, using nimble it's a good exercise of eating our own dog food

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Im not sure about it but dont have strong opinions on it neither. Another pro that it has besides the one you mentioned:

* it doesnt require an update of the extension to update the langserver.

How important is that, compared to the other things?

Also, using nimble it's a good exercise of eating our own dog food

Yes, but:

1. Nimble is also used in the GitHub CI to build the binaries, so we're still eating our own dog food of some sort.
2. Isn't getting a working IDE setup to new Nim users more important? How many users would provide useful bug reports for nimble, versus how many will say "blergh, screw this, this doesn't work" and go away, or use one of the older, unmaintained Nim extensions, just because they appear to work better for them (without the language server, our extension doesn't work at all!)?

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How important is that, compared to the other things?

It just adds up, like the other points.

Isn't getting a working IDE setup to new Nim users more important?

It is not like it were mutually exclusive (i.e. using Nimble vs setup for new users). IMO it's a matter of providing better ux/feedback.

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Isn't getting a working IDE setup to new Nim users more important?

It is not like it were mutually exclusive (i.e. using Nimble vs setup for new users). IMO it's a matter of providing better ux/feedback.

And how would that better ux/feedback look like? A console window showing nimble downloading and compiling stuff?

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I mean, is there any part of nimble that was designed to allow GUI integration?

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And how would that better ux/feedback look like?

We could start with just providing feedback of what's doing and show the actual error if something goes wrong.

I mean, is there any part of nimble that was designed to allow GUI integration?

I dont know if there is work in this direction done but providing info of in what stage Nimble is or what's left sounds like a great addition to Nimble

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And how would that better ux/feedback look like?

We could start with just providing feedback of what's doing and show the actual error if something goes wrong.

I mean, is there any part of nimble that was designed to allow GUI integration?

I dont know if there is work in this direction done but providing info of in what stage Nimble is or what's left sounds like a great addition to Nimble

Do you want (and do you have time) to work on these things? If I were to work on this issue, I would choose to embed the binary. I think it offers a better user experience - the extension works instantly, without any downloads, compilation time (the nimble build is quite slow - it also downloads and compiles the Nim compiler from source).

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it also downloads and compiles the Nim compiler from source

fwiw, it does this only if the installed nim version does not match the expected version - also, the intent is that nimble fetches an already-compiled nim in the case but that hasn't made it to nimble yet.

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it also downloads and compiles the Nim compiler from source

fwiw, it does this only if the installed nim version does not match the expected version - also, the intent is that nimble fetches an already-compiled nim in the case but that hasn't made it to nimble yet.

The nimble.lock file specifies this version:

    "nim": {
      "version": "2.1.1",
      "vcsRevision": "940b1607b8459b4b7b7e20d316bec95c8de85809",
      "url": "https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim.git",
      "downloadMethod": "git",
      "dependencies": [],
      "checksums": {
        "sha1": "ee369ca2ef4fd48e55732c09c5f8b67a4a22daa4"
      }
    },

This makes the user's installed nim version almost never match the expected version. And the intent to add the ability for nimble to download an already-compiled nim is nice in principle, but:

1. this isn't done yet
2. when it's done, it'll require the users to have the new nimble version and we don't control which nimble version they have - it comes with whatever Nim compiler they've got. It could be from Nim 2.0.2, it could be from Nim 1.6.18, or it could be from Nim 1.6.0 for that matter.

So, in practice, the user experience will continue to suck for a long time, if we choose to continue down this road.

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This makes the user's installed nim version almost never match the expected version.

ok, that's a bit weird - for an app like nls, I'd expect it to lock 2.0.2 or any other released version since it shouldn't need any devel features really.

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it comes with whatever Nim compiler they've got.

This is something to change as well and we'll be moving away from it in general - ie when nimble "drives" the nim installation, it shouldn't be packaged with Nim - it's also a problem of the build, ie when nimble builds nim, for some reason it also builds nimble which then replaces whatever nimble is installed which is backwards. Finally, there's no real reason to tie the nimble release schedule to that of nim (unless nim starts releasing much more frequently).

it'll require the users to have the new nimble version

indeed - the current nimble has a lot of aspirational / broken features that lack polish or outright don't wor - these need to be addressed holistically before the extension can provide the excellent experience we want (or the extension needs to do a lot of workarounds that eventually should not be needed). At some point, the extension will likely have to require a minimum nimble version for example to provide some of its functionality - strictly though, it is langserver that has a minimum nimble version requirement to build itself, not vscode-nim.

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this isn't done yet

this is simply a matter of priorities and addressing the issue at the core before introducing workarounds in "leaf" projects like vscode-nim (which also cost development effort) - it's good to have the end-game in mind when deciding what to do with this issue today - for example, the fact that it takes an extra 3 minutes to set up nimlangserver because the build builds nim isn't really a problem that needs addressing in vscode-nim - eventually, as nimble improves, this will solve itself in vscode-nim as well.

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it comes with whatever Nim compiler they've got.

This is something to change as well and we'll be moving away from it in general - ie when nimble "drives" the nim installation, it shouldn't be packaged with Nim - it's also a problem of the build, ie when nimble builds nim, for some reason it also builds nimble which then replaces whatever nimble is installed which is backwards. Finally, there's no real reason to tie the nimble release schedule to that of nim (unless nim starts releasing much more frequently).

Who is going to provide it, then? If we're going to bundle it with the extension, we might as well bundle nimlangserver instead and skip the entire compilation step. If it won't be bundled with the extension, then who is going to provide it?

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this isn't done yet

this is simply a matter of priorities and addressing the issue at the core before introducing workarounds in "leaf" projects like vscode-nim (which also cost development effort) - it's good to have the end-game in mind when deciding what to do with this issue today - for example, the fact that it takes an extra 3 minutes to set up nimlangserver because the build builds nim isn't really a problem that needs addressing in vscode-nim - eventually, as nimble improves, this will solve itself in vscode-nim as well.

But having the nimlangserver binary bundled with the extension is also a possibly desirable "end-game". It will always be the fastest and the least trouble for the majority of the users. Just because nimble will eventually suck less in 3 years time (in addition to the development efforts, you need to include the time needed for users to update their nimble version as well), it will still take more time to compile nimlangserver from source, compared to not compiling it.

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If we're going to bundle it with the extension, we might as well bundle nimlangserver instead and skip the entire compilation step.

Yeah, well, generally I think bundling or downloading binaries provides the better UX for vscode-nim simply because reduces the number of moving parts - this path requires some work on shipping binaries however (such as getting rid of pcre and building langserver statically via musl as is customary for shipping binaries).

That said, if the build via nimble is kept in any shape or form (for example as a fallback in case there is no binary available for the platform or where there are "problems" for fringe distros like nix that have their own standards), the general comments above still apply, and there exist low-hanging fruit ways of making it more pleasurable (that also are broadly beneficial to the ecosystem outside of whatever vscode-nim does).

Ie the "output window" is a general feature that can be used to log the download of the binary or the build, and as vscode becomes smarter, it will also make sense it it to understand more about nimble ("add dependency to nimble file" or "execute nimble task").

That said, there exists a fundamental difference between langserver and nimble that is important to the bundling-or-not decision: nimlangserver is an implementation detail of vscode-nim where there is no expectation that the user will interact with it directly "outside" of vscode (or equivalent editor - sharing langserver between editors is quite the fringe use case that I believe doesn't merit consideration / isn't worth the complexity) whereas nimble is "generally" expected to be used by the user and "integrated" in vscode-nim. This I think is the core motivation for making the installation of langserver transparent for the user (vs using anything coming from PATH), regardless if that means bundling a binary, downloading a binary or compiling from source.

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If we're going to bundle it with the extension, we might as well bundle nimlangserver instead and skip the entire compilation step.

Yeah, well, generally I think bundling or downloading binaries provides the better UX for vscode-nim simply because reduces the number of moving parts - this path requires some work on shipping binaries however (such as getting rid of pcre and building langserver statically via musl as is customary for shipping binaries).

Getting rid of pcre is entirely independent from whether we should ship a binary or build from source via nimble, because nimble does jack shit about the libpcre.so dependency, since libpcre.so isn't a nimble package. So, if you don't have libpcre.so installed on your system, you're getting an error anyway, whether it's a bundled binary, or compiled with nimble. The only way this dependency problem can be resolved automatically via a package manager is if we used the distro's package manager, but that's distro-specific and lot of extra work, and I think that should be done by distro packagers, not by us.

Doesn't mean we shouldn't get rid of libpcre.so in the long run. I'm just saying we don't need to wait for this to be done, before we can ship a binary.

Regards musl - I have a bad opinion about this C library, since I've looked at its sources, at least in the form, used in the WASI SDK, when I was working on Free Pascal for the WebAssembly/WASI platform. For the record, Free Pascal doesn't use a libc, it has its own independent RTL, but I wanted to test compatibility when linking with C code, and the official SDK for WASI used musl, so that's why I had to look at it. Maybe it's just the WASM fork, maybe for Linux it's better quality, I don't know, but the code that I saw sucked. :( So, I would use musl only as a last resort, in case linking with glibc really does create problems between distros.

I'm planning to test our nimlangserver binaries on several popular distros in a VM and see if it works.

That said, if the build via nimble is kept in any shape or form (for example as a fallback in case there is no binary available for the platform or where there are "problems" for fringe distros like nix that have their own standards), the general comments above still apply, and there exist low-hanging fruit ways of making it more pleasurable (that also are broadly beneficial to the ecosystem outside of whatever vscode-nim does).

Yeah, a dual option - bundled binary or if that fails, nimble install is also possible end game. It's just more options to support, but it's doable.

Ie the "output window" is a general feature that can be used to log the download of the binary or the build, and as vscode becomes smarter, it will also make sense it it to understand more about nimble ("add dependency to nimble file" or "execute nimble task").

That said, there exists a fundamental difference between langserver and nimble that is important to the bundling-or-not decision: nimlangserver is an implementation detail of vscode-nim where there is no expectation that the user will interact with it directly "outside" of vscode (or equivalent editor - sharing langserver between editors is quite the fringe use case that I believe doesn't merit consideration / isn't worth the complexity) whereas nimble is "generally" expected to be used by the user and "integrated" in vscode-nim. This I think is the core motivation for making the installation of langserver transparent for the user (vs using anything coming from PATH), regardless if that means bundling a binary, downloading a binary or compiling from source.

That's why I don't think relying on nimble to install nimlangserver is a good idea. Nimble is a development tool, designed for building from source. Most of the time, we install binaries, we don't compile everything from source. There are Linux distros that build everything from source, and they have dedicated followers, however the majority of users simply don't use them, because they don't have the time to waste.

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in case linking with glibc really does create problems between distros.

the simple rule when using glibc is to compile on an old distro (like ubuntu 18 LTS), usually via a docker image (instead of whatever github actions provides) - this tends to work for the 95% use case because it covers any distro newer than that - musl is a popular way for the last 5% and given that Nim doesn't rely on any advanced glibc functionality, I think it's a safe option to consider.

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When trying the extension on a new Ubuntu install, I found out there's also another dependency, when using nimble. Git.

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In the PR above (needs testing on other platforms before merging) The installation now happens locally and the output is transferred to the "Nim" output windows. So if something goes wrong the user knows.

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