Simplifying Development: A Return to Monorepo Architecture

[binhtran432k]

🤔 What's the problem you've observed?

The VSCode extension serves as a wrapper for the language server, while the language server, in turn, acts as a wrapper for the language service. This separation, though common, presents challenges for contributors in local development. Additionally, when a patch is applied to the language service, the current practice necessitates making corresponding patches to both VSCode and the language server in the development chain. Adopting a monorepo architecture could simplify this process, while also not compromising independent development and deployment.

✨ Do you have a proposal for making it better?

We should either create a new repository that includes all components—Cucumber VSCode, language server, and language service—or reuse the existing VSCode repository with the language server and language service integrated.

📚 Any additional context?

I notice that we have moved away from the monorepo approach, but for these packages, it may not be worthwhile. Some popular VSCode extensions follow this architecture, like robotframework-lsp and tailwindcss-intellisense.

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[kieran-ryan]

Thanks for the interesting perspective @binhtran432k. Can understand some of the challenges. With a monorepo architecture, some challenges could be:

1. How to rectify issues presented by the previous monorepo architecture
2. How to test across different source code versions of two components. For example, an in-development language-server change against an in-development language-service change of another contributor on a different branch/fork.
3. "presents challenges for contributors in local development" - would you be able to outline some of these challenges? Can you think of any other opportunities that might mitigate or resolve these challenges?

[kieran-ryan]

Will close this for now @binhtran432k, had a look at alternatives and some other repositories but unfortunately haven't located a suitable mitigation for the mentioned issues. Will keep an eye on this and reopen if encounter a suitable option; will also continue to work on improving the development experience and documentation. Appreciate your support as always.