Move Analyzer Plus

Provides language support for the Move programming language.

Install on the VSCode Extension Marketplace: Move Analyzer Plus on the VSCode Marketplace

Currently, this means a basic grammar and language configuration for Move (.move) that enables syntax highlighting, commenting/uncommenting, simple context-unaware completion suggestions while typing, and other basic language features in Move files.

For information about Move visit the Move repository.

How to Install

The move-analyzer Visual Studio Code extension works via two components: the extension itself and the move-analyzer language server.

1. Installing the move-analyzer language server

The move-analyzer language server is a Rust program that is part of the Move repository. It may be installed in one of two ways:

• Clone the Move repository yourself and build move-analyzer from its source code, which is especially useful if you will work on core Move. To do so, follow the instructions in the Move tutorial's Step 0: Installation.
• Use Rust's package manager cargo to install move-analyzer in your user's PATH. This is recommended for people who do not work on core Move.
  1. If you don't already have a Rust toolchain installed, you should install Rustup, which will install the latest stable Rust toolchain.
  2. Invoke cargo install --git https://github.com/move-language/move move-analyzer to install the move-analyzer language server in your Cargo binary directory. On macOS and Linux, this is usually ~/.cargo/bin. You'll want to make sure this location is in your PATH environment variable.

To confirm that you've installed the language server program successfully, execute move-analyzer --version on the command line. You should see the output move-analyzer 1.0.0.

2. Installing the move-analyzer Visual Studio Code extension

1. Open a new window in any Visual Studio Code application version 1.55.2 or greater.
2. Open the command palette (⇧⌘P on macOS, or use the menu item View > Command Palette...) and type Extensions: Install Extensions. This will open a panel named Extensions in the sidebar of your Visual Studio Code window.
3. In the search bar labeled Search Extensions in Marketplace, type move-analyzer. The move-analyzer extension should appear in the list below the search bar. Click Install.
4. Open any file that ends in .move. Or to create a new file, click Select a language, and choose the Move language. As you type, you should see that keywords and types appear in different colors.

Troubleshooting

If you see an error message language server executable 'move-analyzer' could not be found in the bottom-right of your Visual Studio Code screen when opening a Move file, it means that the move-analyzer executable could not be found in your PATH. You may try the following:

1. Confirm that invoking move-analyzer --version in a command line terminal prints out move-analyzer 1.0.0. If it doesn't, then retry the instructions in step 1. If it does successfully print this output, try closing and re-opening the Visual Studio Code application, as it may not have picked up the udpates to your PATH.
2. If you installed the move-analyzer executable to a different location that is outside of your PATH, then you may have the extension look at this location by using the the Visual Studio Code settings (⌘, on macOS, or use the menu item Code > Preferences > Settings). Search for the move-analyzer-plus.server.path setting, and set it to the location of the move-analyzer language server you installed.
3. If the above steps don't work, then report a GitHub issue to the Move repository to get help.

Features

Here are some of the features of the move-analyzer Visual Studio Code extension. To see them, open a Move source file (a file with a .move file extension) and:

• See Move keywords and types highlighted in appropriate colors.
• Comment and un-comment lines of code using the ⌘/ shortcut on macOS (or the menu command Edit > Toggle Line Comment).
• Place your cursor on a delimiter, such as <, (, or {, and its corresponding delimiter -- >, ), or } -- will be highlighted.
• As you type, Move keywords will appear as completion suggestions.
• If the opened Move source file is located within a buildable project (a Move.toml file can be found in one of its parent directories), the following advanced features will also be available:
  • compiler diagnostics
  • go to definition
  • go to type definition
  • go to references
  • type on hover