IDE features

Out of the box, Pulsar is an excellent and versatile code editor. But it’s also capable of being a deeply wise code editor for a number of different languages.

If your favorite language has a language server — a tool designed to support common editor tasks for that language — then Pulsar can embrace that language server in order to improve your editing experience by adding a number of features.

We call these IDE features because they’re the kinds of features you typically get in a single-purpose integrated development environment than from a general-purpose code editor:

• Autocompletion
• Project-wide symbol search and “Jump to declaration” functionality
• Linting and code diagnostics
• Identifying and highlighting references
• Refactoring (for example, renaming a method project-wide)
• A hierarchical outline of the current file
• Rich information on hover, like method signatures and links to documentation

Read further in this section to find out how to enable these features.

• Getting started

  What are “IDE features”? How can they improve your editor experience?
• IDE features provided by builtin packages

  Learn which IDE features work out of the box.
• IDE features provided by community packages

  Learn which IDE features require the installation of additional packages.
• Writing your own IDE package

  Useful information for package developers who want to wrap language servers.
• Troubleshooting

  Learn how to diagnose the problem when IDE features aren't working.