Bundle the required gems in VSCode extension for the standalone mode

[quackerex]

I noticed Ruby LSP in VSCode installing gems when using standalone mode.

Is it possible to bundle these gems inside the extension itself.

[vinistock]

What do you mean by standalone mode? Running the LSP without a bundle?

If that's the case, the LSP will still create a composed bundle in .ruby-lsp to include debug so that you can interactively debug your code using VS Code. And it will periodically try to update the LSP server so that you're always getting the latest features and improvements.

Can you explain what do you mean by bundling the gems inside the extension? And what would be the advantage over the current approach?

[quackerex]

The main advantage would be not having to modify/deal with local gems.
I think most language extensions follow this practice where they include the LSP and other stuff as part of the VSCode extension

[vinistock]

As far as I know, VS Code extensions can only bundle JS/TS files. Language servers like the Ruby LSP or Rust Analyzer will download the gem/executable to be able to run the server automatically.

We also can't completely avoid dealing with local gems until Bundler adds some new APIs. We need all gems to be installed in order to have Bundler.setup succeed, so that we can automatically find the installed files and index them, require your linter/formatter and so on.

To fully avoid trying to deal with local gems, we would need an API from Bundler that allows the LSP to run a partial Bundler.setup, where we don't care if some gems are not installed yet.

Also, the server is released independently from the extension. We can't fully tie the two or else we would be forced to release the extension even if there are no changes, which would also reduce our speed in delivering auto-updates to users. Right now, the server auto updates without you having to restart VS Code.

The only thing we could do is install the gems we need in the VS Code storage directory instead of the regular place RubyGems puts them in. However, given that Rubyists are quite familiar with RubyGems operations, like gem update ruby-lsp, I wonder if that would lead to more confusion than benefit. For example, if we hide away the gems we need, running gem update ruby-lsp wouldn't work as expected as you'd need to specify the right installation directory (which would be the VS Code storage dir).

[quackerex]

As far as I know, VS Code extensions can only bundle JS/TS files. Language servers like the Ruby LSP or Rust Analyzer will download the gem/executable to be able to run the server automatically.

This is from Ruff which python linter. AFAIK it is bundling linter in VSCode extension.

There might be limitation of it needing be executable tho...

Also, the server is released independently from the extension. We can't fully tie the two or else we would be forced to release the extension even if there are no changes, which would also reduce our speed in delivering auto-updates to users.

That's what ruff does.

Right now, the server auto updates without you having to restart VS Code.

VSCode added thing so you don't need to restart VS Code for extension updates anymore

I say this is only make sense if it's possible to bundle the LSP in extension itself. Otherwise current way is fair if it is limitation of Ruby and Bundler.