Snek Language Support

Snek is a first-principles language development project used for teaching and compiler learning. This extension adds basic Visual Studio Code support for writing .snek programs.

Features

• Syntax highlighting for Snek source files.
• Language activation for files with the .snek extension.
• Snippets for common Snek forms, including fun, let, if, block, loop, and vec.
• Parenthesis-aware indentation, folding, and auto-closing pairs.
• ;; line comments.
• Language server support for parse diagnostics, keyword completions, hover information, and semantic highlighting.

Requirements

This extension requires Visual Studio Code ^1.120.0.

Published builds include the Snek language server. Users do not need Rust, Cargo, or the Snek compiler repository installed.

Supported extension targets:

• macOS Apple Silicon: darwin-arm64
• macOS Intel: darwin-x64
• Linux x64: linux-x64
• Linux ARM64: linux-arm64
• Windows x64: win32-x64

Development

The language server is built with Rust. Before running the extension locally, build the release server:

npm run build-server

For platform-specific VSIX builds, build and package the supported targets:

npm run package:targets

Cross-platform builds require the matching Rust target standard libraries and linkers. The macOS targets can be built on macOS; Linux and Windows targets should be built on matching CI runners or on a machine configured with compatible cross linkers.

The extension loads the bundled server from <target>/server/bin/snek-lsp on macOS/Linux or <target>/server/bin/snek-lsp.exe on Windows.

Extension Settings

This extension does not currently contribute user-configurable settings.

It does set default editor behavior for Snek files:

• Enables semantic highlighting for snek-lang.
• Italicizes function declarations and parameter declarations when semantic tokens are available.

Known Issues

• Language support is intentionally basic and focused on early compiler-learning workflows.