VS Code

primate ships a VS Code extension that provides syntax highlighting and connects to the primate lsp server. Source lives at editors/vscode/ in the project repo.

Install

Install the primate binary so the extension can shell out to primate lsp:
```
cargo install primate --locked
```
The binary lands at ~/.cargo/bin/primate. As long as that’s on your PATH, you’re set. If you’d rather point the extension at a custom path, set primate.server.path in your VS Code settings.
Install the extension from the Marketplace:
- https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=valtyr.primate-vscode
- Or in VS Code: Extensions sidebar → search “primate” → Install.
Open any .prim file. Syntax highlighting and inline diagnostics should appear immediately.

What you get

Syntax highlighting via a TextMate grammar (editors/vscode/primate.tmLanguage.json).
LSP-driven diagnostics, hover, go-to-definition, find-references, format-on-save, and contextual completion (enum variants, unit suffixes).
Cross-target navigation: from a constant in a .prim file, find references jumps to its callsites in generated TypeScript / Rust / Python; from a generated symbol, go-to-definition resolves back to the originating .prim line via the sourcemap.
JSON schema validation for primate.toml.

Settings

Setting	Default	Description
`primate.server.path`	`"primate"`	Path to the `primate` executable. Defaults to looking on PATH.

Commands

primate: Restart LSP Server — kill and re-launch the language server. Useful when you’ve upgraded the CLI binary.

Troubleshooting

If the extension activates but diagnostics never show, the language server probably failed to start. Check Output panel → primate LSP for the error message. Common causes:

primate isn’t on PATH. Run which primate from a terminal; if empty, either cargo install primate --locked or set primate.server.path to an absolute path.
The CLI version doesn’t match the extension. Run primate --version to confirm. Older CLIs may not implement some LSP requests the extension expects (e.g. cross-target navigation is added in v0.1+).

Install from source (development)

If you’re hacking on the extension itself rather than just using it:

cd editors/vscode
npm install
npm run compile

Then in VS Code, open editors/vscode/ and press F5 — that launches an “Extension Development Host” window with the in-progress extension loaded.

To package a .vsix locally without publishing:

npx --yes @vscode/vsce package
code --install-extension primate-vscode-*.vsix

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