Anyone have any luck getting Markdownlint to work with Helix?

[jsco2t]

Hello all.

I'm trying to add support for Markdownlint as an LSP in my local install of Helix. To be clear - Markdownlint doesn't explicitly advertise support for the LSP protocol. Which I suspect might be my issue here. Instead it describes itself as:

markdownlint is a static analysis tool for Node.js

From: https://github.com/DavidAnson/markdownlint

I decided to try to get it to work anyway - but am not having a lot of luck.

Here is what I added into my languages.toml file:

[language-server.markdownlint]
command = "markdownlint"
args = [ "--stdin", "--json" ]

And for the Markdown language (in the same languages.toml file):

[[language]]
name = "markdown"
language-servers = ["vale", "marksman", "markdownlint"] <------------------
file-types = ["md", "mdx"]
formatter = { command = 'prettier', args = ["--parser", "markdown"] }
text-width = 100
rulers = [100]
auto-format = true
indent = { tab-width = 2, unit = "  " }
block-comment-tokens = { start = "<!--", end = "-->" }

When I check the health of Helix - it seems to understand the "LSP" exists (the binary exists):

❯ hx --health markdown
Configured language servers:
  ✓ vale-ls: /Users/jscott/.cargo/bin/vale-ls
  ✓ marksman: /opt/homebrew/bin/marksman
  ✓ markdownlint: /opt/homebrew/bin/markdownlint <-----------------------
Configured debug adapter: None
Configured formatter: prettier
Binary for formatter: /Users/jscott/.nvm/versions/node/v18.12.1/bin/prettier
Highlight queries: ✓
Textobject queries: ✘
Indent queries: ✘

However - when I open a Markdown doc - I am seeing these errors reported from Helix:

❯ cat helix.log
2024-09-05T17:06:26.921 helix_lsp [ERROR] failed to initialize language server: request 0 timed out
2024-09-05T17:06:27.394 helix_lsp::client [WARN] language server failed to terminate gracefully - server closed the stream
2024-09-05T17:06:27.408 helix_lsp::transport [ERROR] err: <- Other(failed to send a message to server

Caused by:
    channel closed)
2024-09-05T17:06:27.408 helix_lsp::transport [ERROR] vale err: <- StreamClosed

To be fair - I don't know why the last log line complains about vale. The errors are completely gone if I remove support for markdownlint as an LSP for markdown.

Anyway - what I am trying might not work with Markdownlint. I'm not sure. I figured I would post to see if anyone else has tried it yet.

[kirawi]

It does not support the LSP protocol. You can use something like https://github.com/mattn/efm-langserver to use it instead

[jsco2t]

Thanks!

That was incredibly helpful.

For anyone else who stumbles over this - here is what I did on my machine to get this to work.

1. Create a file in ~/.config/efm-langserver/config.yaml

2. Put this content into it:

version: 2
#log-file: "/Users/some-user/.config/efm-langserver/log.log"
#log-level: 2

languages:
  markdown:
    - lint-command: "markdownlint -s"
      lint-stdin: true
      lint-after-open: true
      lint-on-save: true
      lint-formats:
        - "%f:%l %m"
        - "%f:%l:%c %m"
        - "%f: %l: %m"

Update your helix languages.toml as follows:

1. Add LSP server declaration:

[language-server.efm]
command = "efm-langserver"

2. Update your Markdown Language definition to include efm as an LSP:

[[language]]
name = "markdown"
language-servers = ["vale", "marksman", { name = "efm", only-features = [ "diagnostics" ] }]
file-types = ["md", "mdx"]
.........truncated

[jsco2t]

Note that you need to have the markdownlint-cli tool installed