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Comment by rs186 | Hacker News Reader

So how do you get intellisense and debug C++ in Zed?

There's a great doc on exactly how Zed handles syntax and intellisense-style completions: https://zed.dev/docs/configuring-languages

Debugging isn't in yet, but is actively being worked on and planned for public release before 1.0: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5065, there's an active channel in their Discord discussing the development of the feature.

That first link doesn’t really explain anything about syntax/autocomplete. It’s just about config options per language (formatted, linter, lsp) but I guess I was expecting something else?

It explains it in clear terms:

"""

Zed's language support is built on two main technologies:

    Tree-sitter: This handles syntax highlighting and structure-based features like the outline panel.
    Language Server Protocol (LSP): This provides semantic features such as code completion and diagnostics.

These components work together to provide Zed's language capabilities.

"""

Note this is _not_ how VSC's C++ Intellisense works. The VSC C++ plugin uses proprietary features of MSVC, it doesn't use LSP.

That’s not really a description of anything, just a list of libraries zed uses, let alone a great doc. Just expected more than “its tree sitter and lsp”.

Will they use DAP?

My understanding is that DAP support is merged into their internal builds and is being polished up for a public release.

clangd is an LSP. You can use it in any editor with LSP support https://clangd.llvm.org/

Why isn't Cursor using this by default then?

I don't think MSVC provides an LSP, so the VSC C++ extension uses proprietary Intellisense features instead. LLVM provides their own extension to use the clangd LSP: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=llvm-vs-...

In short: Corporate politics and the Cursor team taking the path of least resistance.

Zed uses open-source language servers. It just doesn't rely on proprietary extensions.

I actually worked a bunch on the language server logic in Zed trying to get a bunch of it to work on Windows. All I have to say about that is: ugh.

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