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Hey HN! We have released the initial version of the Postgres Language Server we started working on almost two years ago[0]. You can try it out by downloading t

Hey HN! We have released the initial version of the Postgres Language Server we started working on almost two years ago[0]. You can try it out by downloading the binary from the repo[1]. It is also available on npm, as a vscode extension and via nvim-lspconfig and mason.[2] We fell into plenty of rabbit holes along the way, but dug our way out of each. We're now using mostly pragmatic, almost naive solutions for our problems. You can find more details in this blog post.[3] Try it out and let us know what breaks. Bug reports, ideas, and contributions are all welcome-especially if you want to hack on some Rust. Last, but not least, we want to give a shoutout to Biome[4]. We spent a lot of time studying their codebase and have been adopting many of their approaches. We wouldn't be here without their work. [0] Announcement Show HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37020610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37020610 [1] Repository: https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-server https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-serv... [2] Installation Guides: https://pgtools.dev/#installation https://pgtools.dev/#installation [3] Blog Post: https://www.supabase.com/blog/postgres-language-server https://www.supabase.com/blog/postgres-language-server [4] Biome: https://biomejs.dev https://biomejs.dev

kiwicopple 1y ago
For those who don’t read the blog post, I thought this was pretty cool: > The idea to use tree-sitter in addition to libpg_query came from feedback[0] on our previous HN post, so thank you for that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570680
vaylian 1y ago
Language servers rule. Thanks for doing this!
- steinroe 1y ago
  my pleasure! I had my ide point to the debug build locally for over a year now, and it has been very rewarding to slowly see it mature (as in crash less) during my day job over time.
d4rkp4ttern 1y ago
What does a language server do? Asking for those who missed the memo.
- rad_gruchalski 1y ago
  > The Language Server Protocol (LSP) is an open, JSON-RPC-based protocol for use between source code editors or integrated development environments (IDEs) and servers that provide "language intelligence tools":[1] programming language-specific features like code completion, syntax highlighting and marking of warnings and errors, as well as refactoring routines. The goal of the protocol is to allow programming language support to be implemented and distributed independently of any given editor or IDE.[2] In the early 2020s, LSP quickly became a "norm" for language intelligence tools providers.[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol
- pdpi 1y ago
  The Language Server Protocol is essentially a standard for editors to talk to language tooling. All the usual refactor/go-to-definition/auto-complete functionality you expect from a modern IDE is implemented in a language-agnostic way in the editor in terms of calls to the language server, and language servers then provide the actual concrete implementations of that functionality. IIRC Microsoft defined the spec in the context of creating VS Code, but these days every editor and their uncle supports it (from Vim and Emacs to Sublime Text and even IntelliJ). You can get a solid IDE-like experience for most mainstream-ish languages, and on most editors, through LSP.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- steinroe 1y ago
  thanks for asking! its what provides all language intelligence features in your IDE. so autocompletion, diagnostics, syntax highlighting etc. the postgres language server currently supports autocompletion, syntax error highlighting, type-checking and linting.
- 1y ago
mjw1007 1y ago
I suggest it would be helpful if the README's intro expanded a little more on the project's scope. "for postgres" is a bit vague, and "focusing on developer experience and reliable SQL tooling." doesn't tell me much about what it actually does. If I was coming to this project for the first time I think the questions I'd immediately like the answers to are: - What language is this language server for? Is it just for SQL proper, or for PL/pgSQL, or writing C extensions, or what? - What makes it PostgreSQL-specific? Is it just that it follows PostgreSQL's dialect of SQL? - Does it expect to be told about your database's schema? And if so, do you tell it by giving it a database connection, or letting it see files defining the schema, or what?
- juleswritescode 1y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. Good points, we'll improve the README. Regarding your questions: 1. It's currently only for SQL statements, but we'll work on function bodies and PL/pgSQL soon. 2. Exactly, we follow the the PostgreSQL dialect (we use Postgres's parser) 3. You can give it a database connection and it will query some pg_catalog tables. If you don't provide connection details, we'll bypass features requiring that.
  - jmholla 1y ago
    > You can give it a database connection and it will query some pg_catalog tables. If you don't provide connection details, we'll bypass features requiring that. It'd be nice if users could manually obtain and provided that information.
    - trillic 1y ago
      I agree. But you can just point it to an empty db with your schema.
homebrewer 1y ago
> we started working on almost two years ago Jesus, this really puts it into perspective how much effort JetBrains have put into their IDEs, which have had superb support for all popular SQL dialects for as long as I can remember. Thank you for providing the community with a FOSS alternative, because IIRC there wasn't anything remotely comparable to JetBrains up until now.
- steinroe 1y ago
  to put things into perspective: even though it took a lot of effort, it's just a side project by two people who used it to learn rust along the way. A full-time team would have finished much faster.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- piokoch 1y ago
  That's a bit of exaggeration, IntelliJ DB tool is okeish, but there is nothing special about it. Even rather dated SQL Squirell is equally good, or even better in some places (like keeping run sqls history, better configurability of unusual parameters of some more exotic databases, like, say, DB2).
ayhanfuat 1y ago
I am pretty excited about this. Thank you for all your effort. My initial tests fails whenever there are CTEs. Are they not supported? I get processing panicked: cannot start statement within statement at Some(Token { kind: With, text: "with", span: 0..4, token_type: ReservedKeyword }) whenever I try a file containing a CTE (this one was a file with this query: `with test as (select 1 as id) select * from test;`).
- juleswritescode 1y ago
  Thanks for the report. Hmm, we have some tests for CTEs, so at least we tried to support them. I'll file an issue with your exact query.
  - juleswritescode 1y ago
    steinroe is a very fast man: https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-server/pull/263 https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-serv...
    - ayhanfuat 1y ago
      That's great, thank you both!
- steinroe 1y ago
  thanks for the report! that was an oversight. pr with the fix is up.[0] [0] https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-server/pull/263 https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-serv...
crooked-v 1y ago
Any chance this will include formatting in the future?
- juleswritescode 1y ago
  Definitely. Of course, I can't promise that we can make it work properly, but it's high on our todo list.
javajosh 1y ago
What are some of the most impactful/eye-opening lessons you learned from biome?
- steinroe 1y ago
  I learned rust by doing this project. didn't have much prior systems programming experience too. usually, I learn best by just trying things until they work, but building a language server is pretty complex. after reading through a lot of similar projects, biome was the easiest to reason about. and it has exactly the architecture I had in mind: a generic workspace api where the language server is just one of many entry points.

kiwicopple 1y ago

For those who don’t read the blog post, I thought this was pretty cool: > The idea to use tree-sitter in addition to libpg_query came from feedback[0] on our previous HN post, so thank you for that https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570680 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38570680

vaylian 1y ago

Language servers rule. Thanks for doing this!

steinroe 1y ago
my pleasure! I had my ide point to the debug build locally for over a year now, and it has been very rewarding to slowly see it mature (as in crash less) during my day job over time.

d4rkp4ttern 1y ago

What does a language server do? Asking for those who missed the memo.

rad_gruchalski 1y ago
> The Language Server Protocol (LSP) is an open, JSON-RPC-based protocol for use between source code editors or integrated development environments (IDEs) and servers that provide "language intelligence tools":[1] programming language-specific features like code completion, syntax highlighting and marking of warnings and errors, as well as refactoring routines. The goal of the protocol is to allow programming language support to be implemented and distributed independently of any given editor or IDE.[2] In the early 2020s, LSP quickly became a "norm" for language intelligence tools providers.[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_Server_Protocol
pdpi 1y ago
The Language Server Protocol is essentially a standard for editors to talk to language tooling. All the usual refactor/go-to-definition/auto-complete functionality you expect from a modern IDE is implemented in a language-agnostic way in the editor in terms of calls to the language server, and language servers then provide the actual concrete implementations of that functionality. IIRC Microsoft defined the spec in the context of creating VS Code, but these days every editor and their uncle supports it (from Vim and Emacs to Sublime Text and even IntelliJ). You can get a solid IDE-like experience for most mainstream-ish languages, and on most editors, through LSP.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
steinroe 1y ago
thanks for asking! its what provides all language intelligence features in your IDE. so autocompletion, diagnostics, syntax highlighting etc. the postgres language server currently supports autocompletion, syntax error highlighting, type-checking and linting.
1y ago

mjw1007 1y ago

I suggest it would be helpful if the README's intro expanded a little more on the project's scope. "for postgres" is a bit vague, and "focusing on developer experience and reliable SQL tooling." doesn't tell me much about what it actually does. If I was coming to this project for the first time I think the questions I'd immediately like the answers to are: - What language is this language server for? Is it just for SQL proper, or for PL/pgSQL, or writing C extensions, or what? - What makes it PostgreSQL-specific? Is it just that it follows PostgreSQL's dialect of SQL? - Does it expect to be told about your database's schema? And if so, do you tell it by giving it a database connection, or letting it see files defining the schema, or what?

juleswritescode 1y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Good points, we'll improve the README. Regarding your questions: 1. It's currently only for SQL statements, but we'll work on function bodies and PL/pgSQL soon. 2. Exactly, we follow the the PostgreSQL dialect (we use Postgres's parser) 3. You can give it a database connection and it will query some pg_catalog tables. If you don't provide connection details, we'll bypass features requiring that.
- jmholla 1y ago
  > You can give it a database connection and it will query some pg_catalog tables. If you don't provide connection details, we'll bypass features requiring that. It'd be nice if users could manually obtain and provided that information.
  - trillic 1y ago
    I agree. But you can just point it to an empty db with your schema.

homebrewer 1y ago

> we started working on almost two years ago Jesus, this really puts it into perspective how much effort JetBrains have put into their IDEs, which have had superb support for all popular SQL dialects for as long as I can remember. Thank you for providing the community with a FOSS alternative, because IIRC there wasn't anything remotely comparable to JetBrains up until now.

steinroe 1y ago
to put things into perspective: even though it took a lot of effort, it's just a side project by two people who used it to learn rust along the way. A full-time team would have finished much faster.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
piokoch 1y ago
That's a bit of exaggeration, IntelliJ DB tool is okeish, but there is nothing special about it. Even rather dated SQL Squirell is equally good, or even better in some places (like keeping run sqls history, better configurability of unusual parameters of some more exotic databases, like, say, DB2).

ayhanfuat 1y ago

I am pretty excited about this. Thank you for all your effort. My initial tests fails whenever there are CTEs. Are they not supported? I get processing panicked: cannot start statement within statement at Some(Token { kind: With, text: "with", span: 0..4, token_type: ReservedKeyword }) whenever I try a file containing a CTE (this one was a file with this query: `with test as (select 1 as id) select * from test;`).

juleswritescode 1y ago
Thanks for the report. Hmm, we have some tests for CTEs, so at least we tried to support them. I'll file an issue with your exact query.
- juleswritescode 1y ago
  steinroe is a very fast man: https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-server/pull/263 https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-serv...
  - ayhanfuat 1y ago
    That's great, thank you both!
steinroe 1y ago
thanks for the report! that was an oversight. pr with the fix is up.[0] [0] https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-server/pull/263 https://github.com/supabase-community/postgres-language-serv...

crooked-v 1y ago

Any chance this will include formatting in the future?

juleswritescode 1y ago
Definitely. Of course, I can't promise that we can make it work properly, but it's high on our todo list.

javajosh 1y ago

What are some of the most impactful/eye-opening lessons you learned from biome?

steinroe 1y ago
I learned rust by doing this project. didn't have much prior systems programming experience too. usually, I learn best by just trying things until they work, but building a language server is pretty complex. after reading through a lot of similar projects, biome was the easiest to reason about. and it has exactly the architecture I had in mind: a generic workspace api where the language server is just one of many entry points.