GLua for Garry's Mod

Language support for Garry's Mod Lua: IntelliSense that follows your values, diagnostics that catch realm and net message bugs before you launch the game, and a formatter.

Documentation · Installation · Quick start · Source · Releases

What it does

IntelliSense that tracks types. Completion follows values through calls, loops, callbacks and metatables — vgui.Create("DFrame") resolves to DFrame, player.GetAll() iterates as Player, and self inside function ENT:Think() is an Entity. It keeps working mid-keystroke, because the parser always returns a tree.

Realm awareness. Every file gets a realm from its path, narrowed by if SERVER then blocks. Calling Player:Kick from a clientside file is flagged before you run the game, and out-of-realm functions are hidden from completion.

Net message analysis. The sender and the handler live in different files, so nothing normally connects them. Unregistered messages, messages never sent, handlers that never run, and payload mismatches between the writes and the reads are all reported across files.

Your own classes. ents.Create("my_turret") is typed as that entity, so the methods it defines on ENT and the accessors its NetworkVars generate complete on the result — not only on self.

Hook intelligence. Name completion, typo detection with suggestions, and callback parameters typed from the hook's documented signature. function ENT: completes the ENTITY hook table and inserts a full stub.

A formatter. Reprints from the syntax tree. Refuses to touch a file that does not parse, never drops a comment, and leaves idiomatic one-liners like if not IsValid(ent) then return end alone.

Backed by 5,586 API entries scraped from the Garry's Mod wiki, plus an index of your own workspace.

Setup

Open a .lua file in a Garry's Mod addon. The status bar shows the file's realm:

GLua · Server

To use the formatter:

"[glua]": {
  "editor.defaultFormatter": "bluejutzu.glua-lsp",
  "editor.formatOnSave": true
}

It leaves other Lua projects alone

This extension does not claim .lua in its manifest. It only adopts a file when the workspace actually looks like Garry's Mod — a lua/ tree, an addon.json, a gamemodes/ directory, or GMod-only API use in the file itself. So it will not fight your Love2D, Luau or Neovim setups.

glua.activation switches that to always or never, and clicking the status bar item toggles it per file.

Configuration

Every option is a VS Code setting, and can also live in a committed .glua.json or .gluafmtrc.json so a whole team shares the same rules. .editorconfig and .prettierrc are read too.

Individual findings can be suppressed inline:

-- glua-ignore unused-local
local placeholder = nil

Configuration guide → · Rule reference →

Prior art

Heavily inspired by vscode-glua-enhanced, which is where a lot of these ideas come from. This is another attempt at the same problem as a language server, with a parser and a type model underneath.

Licence

MIT. The API documentation content belongs to Facepunch and the wiki contributors.