Could we index in the cloud?

[davidanthoff]

Here is another idea for our indexing woes: could we create the cache files in the cloud for every known tagged package version in the registry, and then the extension would just download these precomputed files? Maybe this could even be integrated with the new package server stuff that is coming in some way.

This would require that the file format doesn’t use serialization so that it becomes Julia version independent. But that would in general be useful if we were to pursue the compiled LS idea.

Also, there seem two use cases:

• user opens a file that is part of a package (say via goto definition) and we want to provide some level of code navigation, hover etc in that file. I think we should try to use LSIF for this scenario in some way.
• user has a using Foo Statement in a file, and we need symbols, docs etc from Foo to provide features in the currently open file. I don’t think LSIF helps in that scenario, so we would probably need our own symbol file format for that.

In my ideal world these files maybe would even be just downloaded with the package itself via the package manager, so that the our extension can just rely on them being there. But that is probably something for a future iteration.

[non-Jedi]

Could you clarify the "LSIF" acronym please?

[davidanthoff]

https://microsoft.github.io/language-server-protocol/specifications/lsif/0.5.0/specification/. I have to admit I don't understand what MS is up-to with that...