Understanding how ALE, Coc and rustacean vim interact

[agis]

First of all, thanks for this amazing plugin. I use it daily and it massively improves my workflow.

My intended setup, for Rust, is the following:

• use Coc for auto-completion
• use ALE for linting
• use rustaceanvim for everything else

It's my understanding, that each of these plugins spins up their own rust-analyzer binary. I was trying to make my configuration only use one instance of rust-analyzer, so I went ahead and set g:ale_disable_lsp=1 for the Rust ftplugin.

I want to understand what's the implication of that setting, when rust-analyzer is already started by the other two plugins (or one of them). I see that ALEGoToDefinition stops working, but linters are still functioning? How can one function while the other does not?

Also, is there a way to instruct ALE to user the already started rust-analyzer?

Thanks in advance!

P.S.: Here's my config:

 Current Filetype: rust
Available Linters: ['analyzer', 'cargo', 'cspell', 'rls', 'rustc']
   Linter Aliases:
'analyzer' -> ['rust_analyzer']
  Enabled Linters: ['analyzer']
  Ignored Linters: ['analyzer']
 Suggested Fixers:
  'remove_trailing_lines' - Remove all blank lines at the end of a file.
  'rustfmt' - Fix Rust files with Rustfmt.
  'trim_whitespace' - Remove all trailing whitespace characters at the end of every line.
 
 Linter Variables:
" Press Space to read :help for a setting
let g:ale_rust_analyzer_config = {}
let g:ale_rust_analyzer_executable = 'rust-analyzer'
 
 Global Variables:
" Press Space to read :help for a setting
let g:ale_cache_executable_check_failures = v:null
let g:ale_change_sign_column_color = v:null
let g:ale_command_wrapper = v:null
let g:ale_completion_delay = v:null
let g:ale_completion_enabled = 0
let g:ale_completion_max_suggestions = v:null
let g:ale_disable_lsp = 1
let g:ale_echo_cursor = v:true
let g:ale_echo_msg_error_str = 'Error'
let g:ale_echo_msg_format = v:null
let g:ale_echo_msg_info_str = 'Info'
let g:ale_echo_msg_warning_str = 'Warning'
let g:ale_enabled = 1
let g:ale_fix_on_save = 1
let g:ale_fixers = {'go': ['gopls', 'remove_trailing_lines', 'trim_whitespace'], 'typescript': ['prettier'], '*': ['remove_trailing_lines', 'trim_whitespace'], 'javascript': ['prettier'], 'rust': ['remove_trailing_lines', 'trim_whitespace']}
let g:ale_history_enabled = v:true
let g:ale_info_default_mode = 'preview'
let g:ale_history_log_output = v:true
let g:ale_keep_list_window_open = v:null
let g:ale_lint_delay = 200
let g:ale_lint_on_enter = 1
let g:ale_lint_on_filetype_changed = v:true
let g:ale_lint_on_insert_leave = 1
let g:ale_lint_on_save = 1
let g:ale_lint_on_text_changed = 'always'
let g:ale_linter_aliases = {}
let g:ale_linters = {'go': ['gopls', 'golangci-lint'], 'typescript': ['eslint'], 'lua': ['lua_language_server'], 'rust': ['analyzer'], 'javascript': ['eslint'], 'ruby': ['ruby', 'solargraph']}
let g:ale_linters_explicit = v:false
let g:ale_linters_ignore = {}
let g:ale_list_vertical = v:null
let g:ale_list_window_size = v:null
let g:ale_loclist_msg_format = v:null
let g:ale_max_buffer_history_size = v:null
let g:ale_max_signs = v:null
let g:ale_maximum_file_size = v:null
let g:ale_open_list = v:null
let g:ale_pattern_options = v:null
let g:ale_pattern_options_enabled = v:null
let g:ale_root = {}
let g:ale_set_balloons = v:false
let g:ale_set_highlights = v:true
let g:ale_set_loclist = 0
let g:ale_set_quickfix = 0
let g:ale_set_signs = v:true
let g:ale_sign_column_always = v:null
let g:ale_sign_error = v:null
let g:ale_sign_info = v:null
let g:ale_sign_offset = v:null
let g:ale_sign_style_error = v:null
let g:ale_sign_style_warning = v:null
let g:ale_sign_warning = v:null
let g:ale_sign_highlight_linenrs = 1
let g:ale_type_map = v:null
let g:ale_use_neovim_diagnostics_api = v:true
let g:ale_use_global_executables = v:null
let g:ale_virtualtext_cursor = 'all'
let g:ale_warn_about_trailing_blank_lines = v:true
let g:ale_warn_about_trailing_whitespace = v:true
 
  Command History:

[hsanson]

If you check ALE help :h ale you can see the main features ALE provides:

3. Linting
4. Fixing Problems
5. Language Server Protocol Support
    5.2 Completion
    5.3 Go To Definition
    5.4 Go To Type Definition
    5.5 Go To Implementation
    5.6 Find References
    5.7 Hovering
    5.8 Symbol Search
    5.9 Refactoring: Rename, Actions

ALE comes with lots of pre-configured linters, fixers and LSPs with some sane defaults that work out of the box as long as you have the specific linter, fixer, LSP binary in your PATH. To see full list check :h ale-supported-list.

Take some time to read about the LSP support :h ale-lsp and you will learn that Completion, Go To Definition, Go To Type, etc are features that come with LSPs. If LSP support of ALE is disabled then all these features will not be available.

If you want to use Coc for autocompletion and ALE for LSP features such as ALEGoToDefinition then you can leave ALE's LSP feature enabled and disable only the autocompletion with g:ale_completion_enabled = false (see :h ale-completion)

[agis]

Makes sense. So when setting ale_disable_lsp = 1 it is expected that everything listed under 5. Language Server Protocol Support to be disabled, while 3. Linting and 4. Fixing Problems continue working.

[agis]

Actually, I have another question. In :h ale-lsp it says:

ALE integrates with Language Server Protocol (LSP) servers. LSP linters can be
used in combination with any other linter, and will automatically connect to
LSP servers when needed.

So if I set the following:

let g:ale_linters = {
\ 'go':   ['gopls', 'golangci-lint'],
\}
let g:ale_disable_lsp=1
let g:ale_go_gopls_options='--remote=auto'
let g:ale_go_gopls_use_global=1

does this above means that ALE will NOT lint using gopls (since gopls is an LSP)?

[hsanson]

json-api/json-api#268 (comment)

Yes, it wont use gopls for anything.