helix --health zig showing wrong output!

[YoSTEALTH]

Summary

I am using Helix with Zig. I am trying to use custom ZLS and ZIG (path).

I have used https://zigtools.org/zls/editors/helix/ example as shown bellow:

[language-server.zls]
# omit the following line if `zls` is in your PATH
command = "/path/to/zls_executable"
# There are two ways to set config options:
#   - edit your `zls.json` that applies to any editor that uses ZLS
#   - set in-editor config options with the `config.zls.<name>` fields below.
#
# Further information on how to configure ZLS:
# https://zigtools.org/zls/configure/

# Whether to enable build-on-save diagnostics
#
# Further information about build-on save:
# https://zigtools.org/zls/guides/build-on-save/
# config.zls.enable_build_on_save = true

# omit the following line if `zig` is in your PATH
config.zls.zig_exe_path = "/path/to/zig_executable"

First I thought ZigTools had their info wrong! So I filed an report there: zigtools/www.zigtools.org#22 but it looks like Helix health check is reporting wrongly since I can see it auto formatting on/before save.

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

1. helix --health zig`

I expected this to happen:

Configured formatter:
  ✓ zig: /opt/zig-master/zig

Instead, this happened:

❯ helix --health zig
Configured language servers:
  ✓ zls: /usr/bin/zls-master
Configured debug adapter:
  ✓ /usr/bin/lldb-dap
Configured formatter:
  ✘ 'zig' not found in $PATH
Tree-sitter parser: ✓
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✓
Indent queries: ✓

Helix log

This log is probably not related to the bug, but is only error I get:

~/.cache/helix/helix.log

2026-02-26T18:11:29.552 helix_lsp::transport [INFO] zls -> {"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"shutdown","id":3}
2026-02-26T18:11:29.552 helix_lsp::transport [INFO] zls <- {"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":3,"result":null}
2026-02-26T18:11:29.552 helix_lsp::transport [INFO] zls -> {"jsonrpc":"2.0","method":"exit"}
2026-02-26T18:11:29.552 helix_lsp::transport [ERROR] zls err: <- StreamClosed

Platform

Linux 6.19.3-2-cachyos

Terminal Emulator

Ghostty 1.2.3-arch3.1

Installation Method

Octopi 0.18.1 (default pkg manager)

Helix Version

helix 25.07.1 (8e78600a)

[m4rch3n1ng]

while i agree the health output is not super clear i think you are reading it incorrectly.

for formatting files in helix there exists two options: the formatter in the formatter language.toml field and the formatter provided by the language server. the --health output shows you only the former, the formatter defined in the language config.

having that means that you can still format while the language server is not active. for example i do not have zls installed, but i can still format zig files, because i have zig installed. this formatter takes precedence if it exists.

if it doesn't exist, then helix will fall back to the language server and asks it for formatting, which zls supports in this case, which means you can still format files. this capability is not shown in the --health report, and partially because there are a lot of possible capabilities and also because helix would have to start each language server to get this information, it just doesn't show it.

[YoSTEALTH]

Thanks for replying @m4rch3n1ng

I do not have default zig installed on my system. If I need to I ln it manually.

which zig
which: no zig in (...)

This is how I have my languages.toml file setup:

[language-server.zls]
command = "/usr/bin/zls-master"
config.zls.zig_exe_path = "/opt/zig-master/zig"

There is no other zig for it to call so it does format automatically, so the linking is working since it must be calling /opt/zig-master/zig fmt my_file.zig on save.