How to configure QTCreator to use bash-language-server?

Tyler Shellberg

I'm using QTCreator 17.02 on MSYS2.
I need to edit some Bash scripts, and would like to use tooling like shfmt, ShellCheck, etc - all from within QTCreator.
Luckily, bash-language-server (https://github.com/bash-lsp/bash-language-server) exists to solve this.

Unfortunately, I cannot seem to get this to work. When I open a bash file, QTCreator reports:

LanguageClient Bash Language Server: Unexpectedly finished.

The language server itself seems to be implemented as a shell script that has a special case for MSYS:

#!/bin/sh
basedir=$(dirname "$(echo "$0" | sed -e 's,\\,/,g')")

case `uname` in
    *CYGWIN*|*MINGW*|*MSYS*)
        if command -v cygpath > /dev/null 2>&1; then
            basedir=`cygpath -w "$basedir"`
        fi
    ;;
esac

if [ -x "$basedir/node" ]; then
  exec "$basedir/node"  "$basedir/../lib/node_modules/bash-language-server/out/cli.js" "$@"
else 
  exec node  "$basedir/../lib/node_modules/bash-language-server/out/cli.js" "$@"
fi

So at the moment in QTCreator, I'm accessing the language server as follows:

Startup Behavior: Requires an Open File
Initialization options: (empty)
Executable: C:\msys64\usr\bin\sh.exe
Arguments: C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin\bash-language-server

I'm not really sure how to fix this. It's possible this language server just isn't compatible with QTCreator?

I also tried running the server with "start" before trying to open QTCreator, but that did not help.

I've also tried setting it to use C:/msys64/ucrt64/bin/bash-language-server.cmd, with no arguments - but I have the same error.

EDIT: I tried this on a Rocky 9 machine as well, and here I do get some useful output:

kf.syntaxhighlighting: Unable to resolve external include rule for definition "reStructuredText" in "Bash"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "Usage:\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "  bash-language-server start             Start listening on stdin/stdout\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "  bash-language-server -h, --help        Display this help and exit\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "  bash-language-server -v, --version     Print the version and exit\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "Environment variables:\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header field "BASH_IDE_LOG_LEVEL                     Set the log level (default" in "  BASH_IDE_LOG_LEVEL                     Set the log level (default: info)\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header line: "\n"
qtc.languageserverprotocol.parse: Unexpected header field "Further documentation" in "Further documentation: https://github.com/bash-lsp/bash-language-server\n"

So it looks like the issue is that it's interacting with the language server in the wrong way? That's the output I would expect if I just ran the executable with no arguments. I'm not sure how to resolve that though.

aha_1980

Hi @Tyler-Shellberg,

on my Ubuntu Linux 24 I installed the bash-language-server with snap and then setup the language client as follows:

and this works for me. If you have to set sh.exe as executable, then please try to add start as argument.

Regards