Integrate Biome in an editor plugin

Biome has LSP first-class support. If your editor does implement LSP, then the integration of Biome should be seamless.

Use the LSP proxy

Biome has a command called lsp-proxy. When executed, Biome will spawn two processes:

a daemon that does execute the requested operations;
a server that functions as a proxy between the requests of the client - the editor - and the server - the daemon;

If your editor is able to interact with a server and send JSON-RPC request, you only need to configure the editor run that command.

You can check how the neo-vim biome plugin does it.

Use `stdin`

If your editor doesn’t support LSP, you use directly the binary biome and call it using standard input.

The following commands can be called via standard input:

Biome will return the new output (or the original output if changes haven’t occurred) to standard output and the diagnostics to standard error.

When you use stdin, you must pass the --stdin-file-path option. The file path doesn’t need to exist in your file system, it can be any name. What’s important is to provide the correct file extension, so Biome knows how to treat your file.

It’s the editor’s responsibility to locate the resolve the path of the binary and then call it when it’s needed. The binaries are shipped to npm based on the architectures and OS that we support:

@biomejs/cli-darwin-arm64
@biomejs/cli-darwin-x64
@biomejs/cli-linux-arm64
@biomejs/cli-linux-x64
@biomejs/cli-win32-arm64
@biomejs/cli-win32-x64

The binary name is biome or biome.exe, and it can be found in the root directory of the library, e.g.: @biomejs/cli-darwin-arm64/biome, @biomejs/cli-win32-x64/biome.exe.

Use the daemon with the binary

Using the binary via CLI is very efficient, although you won’t be able to provide logs to your users. The CLI allows you to bootstrap a daemon and then use the CLI commands through the daemon itself.

If order to do so, you first need to start a daemon process with the start command:

biome start

Then, every command needs to add the --use-server options, e.g.:

echo "console.log('')" | biome format --use-server --stdin-file-path=dummy.js

Daemon logs

The Biome daemon saves logs in your file system. Logs are stored in a folder called biome-logs. The path of this folder changes based on your operative system:

Linux: ~/.cache/biome;
Windows: C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\biomejs\biome\cache
macOS: /Users/<UserName>/Library/Caches/dev.biomejs.biome

For other operative systems, you can find the folder in the system’s temporary directory.

To obtain the precise path, execute the following command:

biome explain daemon-logs

The log files are rotated on an hourly basis.