History

Created by Microsoft, alongside collaborations with Red Hat and Codenvy. Open sourced in June 2016. Nowadays most languages have an LSP or viable LSP in the ecosystem. Now they are staple part of the runtime of some languages.

Definition

Stands for Language Server Protocol. It defines the protocol used between an editor (client) and a language server that provides languagte features like auto-complete, go-to definition, etc.

Where and How Does this Occur?

It occurs in the editor. A language server communicates with the client. Editor spawns the process by itself, it will own that process for the lifetime of the editor session.

Client can 'request' stuff from the server, and it will respond with an answer that could satisfy this request.

Why is this needed?

It is one method of trying to make a large M x N problem into a M + N problem:

• M editors
• N languages

Each editor needs its own iteration of a language server. With LSP, you have a protocol to define servers for lanugages.