Integrating Developer Experiences -- Build Server Protocol and beyond

IDEs - Integrated Development Environments - traditionally provide out of the box support for many of the tasks that go into making working software out of source code. But increasingly, developers expect to be able to use any one of a variety of special-purpose tools for each task. This shifts the focus of the IDE from "Integrated" to "Integrating" external tools into a coherent experience.

Especially in the Scala ecosystem, we have an increasing number of build tools to choose from. I have been focusing on integrating sbt and other new tools with the IntelliJ Scala plugin and will talk about challenges involved and how the Build Server Protocol makes it possible for IntelliJ to interface with any build tool.

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3. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Integrating Developer Experiences Build Server Protocol and beyond … Justin Kaeser @ebenwert IntelliJ Scala Team JetBrains @IntelliJScala
4. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Return of the One- Job-T ool build tools, dependency managers, test frameworks … cross-platform, command line interface, programmable run in a variety of contexts
5. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Integration Issues … idiosyncratic configuration, APIs special-purpose integrations IntelliJ + ScalaTest/Specs IntelliJ + sbt IntelliJ + Akka, Play, Scalafmt, … likewise: bloop + sbt/Mill/ Maven…
6. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Build T ools in Scala lots of choices little coherence “But I just want to use my favorite frontend!”
8. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Language Server Protocol addresses major integration bottleneck: editor+compiler standard way for editor to communicate with language server works on file/folder level
9. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences LSP + IDE Challenges LSP does not model structure of codebase no common concept of build/test/run IntelliJ-specific: LSP does not model syntax tree
10. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Emerging Wrath New Build Tool: Fury
12. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Build Server Protocol extends / complements LSP integrates build tools and IDEs / language servers abstracts project model into a few generic concepts common operations as requests with defined semantics
13. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences client-server protocol, bidirectional client sends requests server sends notifications BSP Concepts
14. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Server Discovery connection file specify how to start local bsp server communication via stdin/stdout
15. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Lifecycle client → server: build/initialize server → client: build/initialized client → server: build/shutdown client → server: build/exit
16. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Build Structure workspace/buildTargets capabilities language-specific data dependencies buildTarget/sources source directories and files
17. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Build Actions buildTarget/compile buildTarget/test buildTarget/run
18. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Diagnostics notifications from server to client errors / warnings about specific file and code location analogous to LSP Diagnostics
19. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences T asks notifications from server to client inform about task progress 
 (compile, test, …)
20. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences IntelliJ Scala as BSP client
21. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Build T arget to Module IntelliJ modules don’t map exactly to build targets module owns source, no shared sources modules have compile/test scope, targets have types, not scopes
22. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences BSP diagnostics and task progress shown in build toolwindow Compile Requests
23. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences The BSP Ecosystem
24. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences BSP Roadmap protocol v2.0 final is about done IntelliJ, Bloop, Fury, Mill building on v2.0 support in more build tools (sbt, Bazel?) more complete support in IntelliJ more languages project mapping robustness test, run requests
25. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences … and beyond integrating more tools linting (external to build tool) remote building testing (fine-grained) ??? challenges are tools similar enough for protocol abstraction? adoption
26. @ebenwert Integrating Developer Experiences Links BSP specification bsp4j / bsp4s libraries and testkit Integrating Developer Experiences blog post