Zed

Zed is a collaborative editor with an extension system and builtin support for the Language Server Protocol.

Installation

To use Air in Zed, you currently need to install the following two Zed extensions by running the command zed: extensions:

• R

  • Adds language support for R, teaching Zed about R file types, syntax highlighting, and other basic editor capabilities. This is required for Zed to detect R files and call Air on them.

  • Adds language server support for R, backed by the languageserver R package. This is turned on by default, but is optional if you just want to use Air. The languageserver package provides a more comprehensive language server than Air. While Air’s language server is currently focused only on formatting, languageserver also provides help, go to definition, and other nice features.

• Air

  • Adds language server support for R, backed by Air. The Air language server is primarily used for document formatting.

You won’t need to install the Air command line tool - the Zed extension will download it for you as needed.

To configure Zed to use the Air language server to format R files, add the following to your Zed settings.json:

{
  "languages": {
    "R": {
      "language_servers": ["air"]
    }
  }
}

If you’d like to also use languageserver through the Zed R extension, use the following configuration:

{
  "languages": {
    "R": {
      "language_servers": ["air", "r_language_server"]
    }
  }
}

It’s important that "air" is provided before "r_language_server", otherwise Air won’t get formatting requests!

If you use "r_language_server", note that languageserver provides on-type formatting support. Notably, it will automatically break pipe chains of >1 pipe over multiple lines when you type a closing ). If you don’t want this and would like Air to be fully in charge of formatting, then use this configuration:

{
  "languages": {
    "R": {
      "language_servers": ["air", "r_language_server"],
      "use_on_type_format": false
    }
  }
}

Features

Format on save

The Zed setting format_on_save is "on" by default, so there is no additional configuration required to get Zed to format your R files on save using Air.