Join forces with Bash IDE

[felipecrs]

I would love our two projects to join forces that all editors (Atom, Eclipse, Emacs, Helix, JupyterLab, Neovim, Sublime Text, Vim, Visual Studio Code, Oni, and editors that I forgot) can get the same great shellcheck linting experience as provided by vscode-shellcheck. ;)

Originally posted by @skovhus in #916 (comment)

An alternative would be to join forces and ensure that all editors get a great ShellCheck experience. Your great extension has a few feature that we currently do not support in the bash language server, but it should be too hard to add.

Originally posted by @skovhus in bash-lsp/bash-language-server#711 (comment)

Thus, I'm opening this thread for discussing this. The Bash IDE repository can be found at https://github.com/bash-lsp/bash-language-server.

[felipecrs]

@skovhus I also think that providing a single, better maintained extension would provide a better experience for end-users.

However, just to be clear, we're talking about deprecating vscode-shellcheck in favor of Bash IDE. Right?

As you mentioned, at the moment Bash IDE lacks some features that are present in VS Code ShellCheck. The ones I can think of:

• Ability to set whether to run ShellCheck on type, on save, or manually. I don't personally use this feature though, as I always keep it on type.
• Bundled ShellCheck binaries for a great out of the box experience, including distribution of platform specific .vsix packages.
• Fix all auto-fixable errors in one command, or on save.
• Grammar for .shellcheckrc files.
• Support for alternative shells as ShellCheck does (namely sh (POSIX), dash and ksh).

@timonwong what's your opinion about this?

[skovhus]

Thanks for writing this up.

There could like be some features that is harder or not possible to do with an language server protocol (LSP) server compared to a vscode extension. I'm not 100% on this, but I'm unsure on how to provide grammar for .shellcheckrc files for example – while it definitely might be possible.

However, just to be clear, we're talking about deprecating vscode-shellcheck in favor of Bash IDE. Right?

As bash language server has a much wider scope and is applicable to all editors following the LSP protocol – eventually deprecating vscode-shellcheck could be natural step. Similar idea presented in #114.

But I also see a world where the two projects could co-exist and share fundamentals (like ShellCheck binaries) and features. As mentioned the fact that vscode-shellcheck is a vscode only extension does give some flexibility compare to bash-language-server that follows the language server protocol.

As for the features lacking then I believe your list it correct, although we do support alternatives shells based on the shebang and file extension of the file.

[felipecrs]

I'm not 100% on this, but I'm unsure on how to provide grammar for .shellcheckrc files for example – while it definitely might be possible.

It should be possible as part of the VS Code client only, at least in worst case. Anyway, grammar for this file that such a meaningful feature.

although we do support alternatives shells based on the shebang and file extension of the file.

Well, that's great then!