Adding an unknown language to languages.toml gives a cryptic error message

[jochumdev]

Summary

Hey!

I love helix, thanks for it!

Adding an unkonwn language gives a cryptic error.

Reproduction Steps

I tried this:

Adding this to languages.toml:

[[language]]
name = "unknown"

Gives the following error:

I expected this to happen:

Unknown language "unknown" in language config.

Instead, this happened:

Failed to parse language config: missing field `scope`
in `language`

Helix log

No response

Platform

Linux

Terminal Emulator

alacritty

Installation Method

arch linux package

Helix Version

25.07.1-1

[RoloEdits]

This would be how you add language support. helix cannot possibly know every potential string and whether its a real language or not. The scope message is that every language needs a base set of things defined so helix can work properly, with scope being one of these things, hence the failed parse.

[jochumdev]

This would be how you add language support. helix cannot possibly know every potential string and whether its a real language or not. The scope message is that every language needs a base set of things defined so helix can work properly, with scope being one of these things, hence the failed parse.

Shouldn't it give at least the language that is failing?

[CalebLarsen]

I agree that from a usability standpoint there should be an indication of the language and line number where the failing language definition starts.