Emacs

Setup

The official lsp-mode package includes a client for the Erlang Language Server.

Here you can find a sample Emacs configuration file which installs and configures all packages required to get all of the Erlang LS features working. Use this configuration file as a starting point for your Erlang LS Emacs configuration.

Whenever opening a project for the first time, you will be prompted by emacs-lsp to select the correct project root. In that occasion, you also have the opportunity to blacklist projects. Information about projects is stored in a file pointed by the lsp-session-file variable. Its default location is ~/.emacs.d/.lsp-session-v1. You may need to prune or amend this file if you change your mind about blacklisting a project or if you erroneously select a project root. For more information about the lsp-session-file and emacs-lsp in general, please refer to the official documentation.

Remember that the Erlang Language Server requires Erlang/OTP 21 or higher to run, so ensure that OTP 21+ is available in your PATH. This can be achieved, for example, by using the exec-path-from-shell Emacs package.

Restarting the language server

You may want to quickly restart the language server for a given workspace (e.g. after an update or in case of a server crash). To do so:

M-x lsp-workspace-restart

Troubleshooting

If things do not work as expected, we advise you to start Emacs with only the configuration from the provided sample file, using the following command:

emacs -q -l [PATH-TO-ERLANG-LS]/misc/dotemacs

This will remove from the equation potential incompatibilities with other packages or configurations that you may have on your workstation and that could conflict with Erlang LS.

To be sure that you don't have outdated or incompatible packages installed, you may also want to rename your ~/.emacs.d directory while you are troubleshooting your Erlang LS Emacs setup.

Also, ensure that Erlang (i.e. erl, escript and friends) and the erlang_ls executable are all available in your PATH. If they are not, you can try the following:

;; Ensure your Emacs environment looks like your user's shell one
(package-require 'exec-path-from-shell)
(exec-path-from-shell-initialize)

Finally, to enable logging on the client-side, just:

(setq lsp-log-io t)

You can then follow the client logs for the current workspace by doing:

M-x lsp-workspace-show-log

Tips and Tricks

Shortcuts for code lenses and quick actions

You can run M-x lsp-avy-lens to show letters next to code lenses. You can then press those letters to trigger the respective action.

If your sideline is enabled ((setq lsp-ui-sideline-enable t)), you can also use M-x lsp-execute-code-action to trigger quick-fix actions.