x/tools/gopls: semantic tokens should report modifiers for the top-level type constructor of each symbol (e.g. struct, number, pointer, interface, etc)

[xzbdmw]

gopls version

Build info

golang.org/x/tools/gopls v0.0.0-20240816163142-66adacf20fc4
golang.org/x/tools/gopls@v0.0.0-20240816163142-66adacf20fc4 h1:iSreTB1mHFYjQkoNmGjFjKRGkrhedt4wmfg
47nKSo28=
github.com/BurntSushi/toml@v1.2.1 h1:9F2/+DoOYIOksmaJFPw1tGFy1eDnIJXg+UHjuD8lTak=
github.com/google/go-cmp@v0.6.0 h1:ofyhxvXcZhMsU5ulbFiLKl/XBFqE1GSq7atu8tAmTRI=
golang.org/x/exp/typeparams@v0.0.0-20221212164502-fae10dda9338 h1:2O2DON6y3XMJiQRAS1UWU+54aec2uopH
3x7MAiqGW6Y=
golang.org/x/mod@v0.20.0 h1:utOm6MM3R3dnawAiJgn0y+xvuYRsm1RKM/4giyfDgV0=
golang.org/x/sync@v0.8.0 h1:3NFvSEYkUoMifnESzZl15y791HH1qU2xm6eCJU5ZPXQ=
golang.org/x/telemetry@v0.0.0-20240712210958-268b4a8ec2d7 h1:nU8/tAV/21mkPrCjACUeSibjhynTovgRMXc32
+Y1Aec=
golang.org/x/text@v0.17.0 h1:XtiM5bkSOt+ewxlOE/aE/AKEHibwj/6gvWMl9Rsh0Qc=
golang.org/x/tools@v0.24.1-0.20240816163142-66adacf20fc4 h1:PoPnfVMls3TamN2+Zq6FsI1uSjUOqW1mt6AXfY
w3kdw=
golang.org/x/vuln@v1.0.4 h1:SP0mPeg2PmGCu03V+61EcQiOjmpri2XijexKdzv8Z1I=
honnef.co/go/tools@v0.4.7 h1:9MDAWxMoSnB6QoSqiVr7P5mtkT9pOc1kSxchzPCnqJs=
mvdan.cc/gofumpt@v0.6.0 h1:G3QvahNDmpD+Aek/bNOLrFR2XC6ZAdo62dZu65gmwGo=
mvdan.cc/xurls/v2@v2.5.0 h1:lyBNOm8Wo71UknhUs4QTFUNNMyxy2JEIaKKo0RWOh+8=
go: go1.22.4

go env

GO111MODULE='auto'
GOARCH='arm64'
GOBIN=''
GOCACHE='/Users/xzb/Library/Caches/go-build'
GOENV='/Users/xzb/Library/Application Support/go/env'
GOEXE=''
GOEXPERIMENT=''
GOFLAGS=''
GOHOSTARCH='arm64'
GOHOSTOS='darwin'
GOINSECURE=''
GOMODCACHE='/Users/xzb/go/pkg/mod'
GONOPROXY=''
GONOSUMDB=''
GOOS='darwin'
GOPATH='/Users/xzb/go'
GOPRIVATE=''
GOPROXY='https://proxy.golang.org,direct'
GOROOT='/usr/local/go'
GOSUMDB='sum.golang.org'
GOTMPDIR=''
GOTOOLCHAIN='auto'
GOTOOLDIR='/usr/local/go/pkg/tool/darwin_arm64'
GOVCS=''
GOVERSION='go1.22.4'
GCCGO='gccgo'
AR='ar'
CC='clang'
CXX='clang++'
CGO_ENABLED='1'
GOMOD=''
GOWORK=''
CGO_CFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_CPPFLAGS=''
CGO_CXXFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_FFLAGS='-O2 -g'
CGO_LDFLAGS='-O2 -g'
PKG_CONFIG='pkg-config'
GOGCCFLAGS='-fPIC -arch arm64 -pthread -fno-caret-diagnostics -Qunused-arguments -fmessage-length=0 -f
file-prefix-map=/var/folders/gv/r110hgbx1gbgzp95kf_q71x40000gn/T/go-build3574151232=/tmp/go-build -gno
-record-gcc-switches -fno-common'

What did you do?

in semtok.go This does not have any actual implementation, and lack of interface color make it very hard to decide wether a param/return variable is a interface or a struct

What did you see happen?

The output of :inspect shows A and B both have

Semantic Tokens
  - @lsp.type.type.go links to Type priority: 125
  - @lsp.mod.definition.go links to @lsp priority: 126
  - @lsp.typemod.type.definition.go links to @lsp priority: 127

and color is the same.

What did you expect to see?

I want to see different colors of struct and interface in definition and param position. I'd like to implement this if it is not that hard, thanks to any guidance in advance!

Editor and settings

neovim

Logs

No response

[gabyhelp]

Related Issues and Documentation

• x/tools/gopls: Missing semantic tokens in the declaration of function type variables #66809
• x/tools/gopls: semantic tokens appear to have broken since v0.13.2 #63415 (closed)
• x/tools/gopls: missing semantic tokens for function parameters in block #56257 (closed)
• x/tools/gopls: Autocompletion implementation should contain comments for the interface. #65543 (closed)
• x/tools/gopls: Automatic completion of functions using interface annotations #59594
• x/tools/gopls: improve the 'implementation' query on interfaces #68641
• x/tools/gopls: not returning semanticTokensProvider capability #54531 (closed)
• x/tools/gopls: semantic tokens: highlight control flow tokens #67663
• x/tools/gopls: named return values with shared type cause incorrect highlighting #60589 (closed)
• x/tools/gopls: <DESCRIBE THE PROBLEM> #67963 (closed)

_{(Emoji vote if this was helpful or unhelpful; more detailed feedback welcome in this discussion.)}

[adonovan]

Semantic tokens are mostly concerned with properties of identifiers, which refer to symbols (named entities). The interesting properties of symbols in Go are things like whether they are var/func/const/type/label, and so on; the actual underlying type (map or channel, say), is not something that semantic tokens cares about. In Go, interface is more like map and channel than like var/func/const/type. So I argue that it's not an appropriate token type for us to report. (By contrast, in Java, "class" and "interface" are properties of the declared symbol, so it does make sense to report them.)

[xzbdmw]

The interesting properties of symbols in Go are things like whether they are var/func/const/type/label

But they can be easily identified by regex and treesitter, while recognizing whether a typename is an interface requires true understanding of code as the term semantic highlights implies.

In Go, interface is more like map and channel than like var/func/const/type. So I argue that it's not an appropriate token type for us to report

Hmm at leat interface looks like the same abstract level as an concrete type despite it is itself a type, given interface are so widespread in codebase and semantically different from a concrete struct type, the ability to distinguish them brings real values, especially in an unfamaliar codebase.

[adonovan]

Hmm at leat interface looks like the same abstract level as an concrete type despite it is itself a type, given interface are so widespread in codebase and semantically different from a concrete struct type, the ability to distinguish them brings real values, especially in an unfamaliar codebase.

I'm not sure I follow. Why is knowing that a symbol's type is an interface more important than knowing that it's a struct, map, channel, or number? There's no technical reason that we couldn't extend semantic tokens to report distinct modifiers for each top-level type constructor of a symbol's type, but I don't understand why would we do this just for interface types.

[xzbdmw]

Sorry to be unclear here, what I mean "interface" is the typename of an identifier instead of the identifier itself, for example

The ResponseWriter is an interface type and Request is a concrete type, and it would be better to paint ResponseWriter a different color by semantic tokens so we can know in a glance that this param needs to pass a struct implements this interface.

[adonovan]

The ResponseWriter is an interface type and Request is a concrete type, and it would be better to paint ResponseWriter a different color by semantic tokens so we can know in a glance that this param needs to pass a struct implements this interface.

Understood, but my question is: what's special about interface types, as opposed to pointer, struct, number types, etc? Why does only one particular type constructor warrant this special treatment?

[xzbdmw]

Because we know a pointer has a prefix *, number types are some finite set such as int32 or float32, and map or slice both has special typedef syntax, but interfaces and structs are hard to distinguish just by their content like the image above.

[adonovan]

Because we know a pointer has a prefix *, number types are some finite set such as int32 or float32, and map or slice both has special typedef syntax, but interfaces and structs are hard to distinguish just by their content like the image above.

But that's not true in general. Go has three kinds of named types (alias types, defined types, and type parameters), all of which can obscure the underlying type so that you can't tell (without digging) whether type T is a pointer, a struct, or a number.

[adonovan]

I will reopen this issue as a more general feature request for semantic tokens to include the top-level type constructor of each identifier.