TODO/FIXME highlighting

[TENX-S]

Check for existing issues

• Completed

I think it's a common and useful feature, since the mainstream editors (IDEA, VS Code) all support it.

If applicable, add mockups / screenshots to help present your vision of the feature

[TerminalFi]

Personally believe this should be left to a Plugin

[SomeoneToIgnore]

Instead of a plugin, is there a way to allow configuring certain matches being colored differently?

I browse logs in editor, and it helps a lot to highlight ERROR and similar lines in red, WARN and similar in yellow, etc.
VSCode provides a Logfile color scheme, but Sublime does not.

Instead, Sublime allows you to add a few directives how to color certain files, example I use for the log files:

 ❯ cat sublime/Logfile.tmLanguage
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>fileTypes</key>
    <array>
        <string>log</string>
    </array>
    <key>name</key>
    <string>Logfile</string>
    <key>patterns</key>
    <array>
        <dict>
            <key>match</key>
            <string>^.*(ERROR|Error|error).*$</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>entity.name.tag.log</string>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>match</key>
            <string>^.*(WARN|Warn|warn).*$</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>variable.parameter.log</string>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>match</key>
            <string>^.*(DEBUG|Debug|debug).*$</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>constant.numeric.log</string>
        </dict>
        <dict>
            <key>match</key>
            <string>^.*(INFO|Info|info).*$</string>
            <key>name</key>
            <string>comment.log</string>
        </dict>
    </array>
    <key>scopeName</key>
    <string>source.log</string>
    <key>uuid</key>
    <string>8728e0fe-14c6-4374-acde-da1857d0a378</string>
</dict>
</plist>

[tmaxmax]

It would be cool if this would also highlight things like Rust's todo! macro.

[berkus]

Would be nice to have a plugin like VSCode's TODO Highlight v2, which is extremely configurable.

[krstp]

FYI: I put the comment on zed-industries/zed#6013, but dos not seem this feature is implemented in latest releases.

[srihariash999]

Highlighting comments as warnings and important notes might also be useful.

[d1y]

My experiment, it worked:

[krstp]

This is not merged yet, correct?

[JosephTLyons]

My experiment, it worked:

Curious - did you directly bake this into Zed, or is this an extension?

[d1y]

My experiment, it worked:

Curious - did you directly bake this into Zed, or is this an extension?

In the zed source code, see zed-industries/zed#9082

[prabh8331]

Hello, Today I have downloaded on linux, I was a VS code user and i am trying to find better alternative, in vs code there was one extension which i used a lot called TODO tree, where my all todo, fixme, bug are shown in single place, is there anything similer to that here?

[kohltastrophe]

Just checking in to see if there's been any progress or updates on extension capabilities that might support this feature? This is one of the few remaining features impacting my decision to fully adopt Zed, and I'm really eager to see it implemented.

Any insights or timelines from the extension team would be greatly appreciated by those of us who have been patiently waiting for this issue to be resolved. If there are ways we could contribute or assist in bringing this feature to fruition, please let us know.

[FrancoLab]

This would be awesome. Switched to Zed from NVim and would love this feature / extension

[TheKamboy]

this would be a nice feature to have

[dogezen]

would like this as well

[aretrace]

I completely understand the initial notion that this seems to be better implemented as a plugin, BUT I do think a integrated comment tag system (with configurable and sensible defaults) would really set zed apart (e.g., using TODO tree in VS Code is supper convenient). Think of it as a nice addition of the 'Standard Library' of zed.

[krstp]

Well.. one thing should be mentioned I do not think it is exactly possible to get it as a plugin. I did try to dab at it, but no success.

TBH, whatever I was trying to do was related to line wrapping, which I think would have the implementation logic somewhat similar.

I was able to create a dummy extension template and install it, but any further changes always took me to the editor level modification, which I need to admit was a notch beyond my comprehension. To be more precise, I do not think plugins level let you access editor level crate for mods 🤔

Checking further the documentation on extensions, I think they are limited to: themes, languages, slash commands (https://zed.dev/docs/extensions/developing-extensions).

Maybe I am misinterpreting something, but AFAIK the modification will need to happen in the base code.

P.S.: If there is a way to do it at the plugin level, I would be happy to get some guidance from the devs and do it.

BTW: I did try to use zed-chat, seeking guidance, but I did not get any answers... :(

[Cluster444]

This should absolutely be in the core zed product. Sorry, but saying this is best as a plugin is not understanding the product you're even building.

I don't want to have to install dozens of dependencies to get basic programming features I use every day.

[kamerado]

This should absolutely be in the core zed product. Sorry, but saying this is best as a plugin is not understanding the product you're even building.

I don't want to have to install dozens of dependencies to get basic programming features I use every day.

I absolutely agree. at this point it makes more sense to just use neovim if you want customization

[Moshyfawn]

You're forgetting the fact that extensions can be shipped with the editor by default.

[andreacfromtheapp]

+1 please

I used vi/vim/neovim and their distro + manual config; Atom, VS Code, Sublime and every editor on earth; lastly I am coming from Emacs to Zed and I really miss this https://docs.doomemacs.org/v21.12/modules/ui/hl-todo/

I would contribute this extension but I'm a Rust beginner still and reading comments here it seems that at the moment this would require some Zed changes.

[berkus]

Wild thought: can a tree-sitter grammar be augmented to recognize these items within the file and highlight them?

[praktiskt]

I got the same idea as berkus above and got an hour to play with this today.

I used:

• Tree sitter: https://github.com/stsewd/tree-sitter-comment
• highlights.scm from nvim-treesitter for comment

I wrote a crude plugin that is able to mark things like TODO, WIP as a Language Extension (follow the guide) meaning TODO-highlighting had to be selected as a language (Ctrl+K M -> TODO) for the buffer, meaning all other syntax highlighting for the language disappeared (ugh).

I am not sure it's possible to write an extension for this and maintain any languages' original highlighting. I only spent 10 minutes playing around with injections.scm but was only ever able to hard-set the language I wanted the original syntax highlighting for (kind of, and mostly incompletely). Would love to get some guidance whether this is possible or not and/or a nudge in the right direction. If there's another extension doing something similar that would work too.

Dropping the work I did below in case someone else wants to take a stab at it. It's nowhere near usable in its current state.

# extension.toml
# ...
[grammars.comment]
repository = "https://github.com/stsewd/tree-sitter-comment"
commit = "3555706cef8b98d3e4c7379d7260548ff03ad363

# languages/comment/config.toml
name = "TODO"
grammar = "comment"
path_suffixes = []
line_comments = ["# ", "// ", "/// ", "-- "]

; languages/comment/highlights.scm
; Copy from here: https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter/blob/master/queries/comment/highlights.scm
...

[griffi-gh]

Actually, ideally we would have sth like TODO Tree from vscode (highlight + a sidebar tab to view all TODOs)

[nnra6864]

I heavily rely on these comments, would be nice to see this feature implemented.

[cloudUser98]

I got the same idea as berkus above and got an hour to play with this today.

I used:

• Tree sitter: https://github.com/stsewd/tree-sitter-comment
• highlights.scm from nvim-treesitter for comment

I wrote a crude plugin that is able to mark things like TODO, WIP as a Language Extension (follow the guide) meaning TODO-highlighting had to be selected as a language (Ctrl+K M -> TODO) for the buffer, meaning all other syntax highlighting for the language disappeared (ugh).

I am not sure it's possible to write an extension for this and maintain any languages' original highlighting. I only spent 10 minutes playing around with injections.scm but was only ever able to hard-set the language I wanted the original syntax highlighting for (kind of, and mostly incompletely). Would love to get some guidance whether this is possible or not and/or a nudge in the right direction. If there's another extension doing something similar that would work too.

Dropping the work I did below in case someone else wants to take a stab at it. It's nowhere near usable in its current state.

extension.toml

...

[grammars.comment]
repository = "https://github.com/stsewd/tree-sitter-comment"
commit = "3555706cef8b98d3e4c7379d7260548ff03ad363

languages/comment/config.toml

name = "TODO"
grammar = "comment"
path_suffixes = []
line_comments = ["# ", "// ", "/// ", "-- "]
; languages/comment/highlights.scm
; Copy from here: https://github.com/nvim-treesitter/nvim-treesitter/blob/master/queries/comment/highlights.scm
...

Zed supports multi language documents!!!. The problem i see is that this type of language injection needs to be specified in the already existing extensions. If we want this to work with tree sitter (tbh that sounds really cool) we need a way to set a global grammar for any type of document.