GitLab CI Language Server (gitlab-ci-ls)

Disclaimer

This is an independent project and not an official GitLab product. It is intended to be used alongside yaml-language-server (yamlls), providing specialized support for GitLab CI files without replacing yamlls.

Features

• Go To Definition: Navigate to definitions of jobs, includes, variables, needs, extends, components, stages and variables.
• Find References: Find all usages of jobs, extends and stages.
• Autocompletion: Suggestions for extends, stages, needs, variables, included projects files and components.
• Hover Information: View documentation for job with merged definitions.
• Diagnostics: Identifies issues with extends references, stage definitions, job needs usage and components.
• Rename: Supports job renaming.

It also supports jump to included files. In case it is a remote file it tries to downloading using current workspace git setup and caches it locally.

Showcase

Note that this video doesn't include all functionalities.

Watch the video

Configuration

Initialization options:

• cache: location for cached remote files
• log_path: location for LS log
• options:
  • dependencies_autocomplete_stage_filtering: Items in dependencies options has to be from previous or current stage. This opption enables dependencies autocomplete result filtering by job stages. It is currently set as opt-in because it takes a longer time (cca 800ms on test repo - medium size) when stages aren't defined in root job because language server needs to first build whole job definition (merging extends) before it can check if job is a valid one. Defaults to false

Project-level Configuration (.gitlab-ci-ls.yml)

For projects that do not have a standard .gitlab-ci.yml file at their root (e.g., GitLab CI template projects that define reusable components without a pipeline of their own), you can specify the root CI files using a .gitlab-ci-ls.yml file in your project's root directory. This allows the language server to correctly identify and process your GitLab CI configurations.

The .gitlab-ci-ls.yml file should contain a root_files key, which is a list of paths to your main GitLab CI files. These paths can be:

• Individual files: Direct paths to .gitlab-ci.yml or .gitlab-ci.yaml files. Example: ["path/to/my-pipeline.gitlab-ci.yml"]
• Directories: The language server will recursively search for .gitlab-ci.yml or .gitlab-ci.yaml files within the specified directories. Example: ["pipelines/"]
• Glob patterns: Patterns that match multiple GitLab CI files. Example: ["templates/**/*.gitlab-ci.yml"]

You can combine these types in a single list to cover all your root CI files.

Example .gitlab-ci-ls.yml:

root_files:
  - pipeline1/.gitlab-ci.yml
  - pipeline2/.gitlab-ci.yml
  - shared-templates/**/*.gitlab-ci.yml
  - ci-configs/

Installation

Hint: On Linux you have to install the package libssl-dev (On Debian based distributions) respectively openssl-devel (On RedHat based distributions) when you use Cargo or Mason installation.

1. GitHub Releases: Download from the GitHub releases page.
2. Homebrew (macOS/Linux): brew install alesbrelih/gitlab-ci-ls/gitlab-ci-ls
3. Cargo (Rust Package Manager): cargo install gitlab-ci-ls
4. Mason (neovim): Github
5. Zed integration: Zed extension You still have to install a binary.

Build from source

cargo build --release

Executable can then be found at target/release/gitlab-ci-ls

Integration with Neovim

Easiest way to use this using neovim is to install it using mason with combination of mason-lspconfig.

Important: To use it now you will have to set correct file type. Before it was attached on yaml file types, but I have decided that it brings too much confusion.

Example how to add it:

vim.filetype.add({
  pattern = {
    ['%.gitlab%-ci%.ya?ml'] = 'yaml.gitlab',
  },
})

Integration with VSCode

Extension can be found here.

This extension supports configuration which needs to be set up because gitlab-ci-ls itself isn't installed along with the extension but it needs to be downloaded from releases, brew or built from source.

Emacs lsp-mode configuration

To use gitlab-ci-ls with Emacs lsp-mode, reference the below sample configuration.

(add-to-list 'lsp-language-id-configuration '("\\.gitlab-ci\\.yml$" . "gitlabci"))
(add-to-list 'lsp-language-id-configuration '("/ci-templates/.*\\.yml$" . "gitlabci"))

(lsp-register-custom-settings
  '(("gitlabci.cache" "/path/where/remote/folders/will/be/cached")
    ("gitlabci.log_path" "/tmp/gitlab-ci-ls.log")))

(lsp-register-client
  (make-lsp-client :new-connection (lsp-stdio-connection '("gitlab-ci-ls"))
                  :activation-fn (lsp-activate-on "gitlabci")
                  :server-id 'gitlabci
                  :priority 10
                  :initialization-options (lambda () (gethash "gitlabci" (lsp-configuration-section "gitlabci")))))

TODO

• Smarter way to initialize, it should support root_dir equal to nil and once file is opened it should receive/calculate new root.
• Fix VSCode completion. It seems it also needs a range to correctly update text.
• Rename to gitlab-ci-ls.
• References for stages
• Variables can be set in matrixes as well, this is relevant for go to definition on variable.
• Support !reference
• Handle default keyword
• Handle components
• Push diagnostics, instead of pull based