Hi @ryanwinchester,

I feel exactly the same way you do. I understand the arguments around typing in Elixir leading to this long thread. For now dialyzer is the best we can get.

Rather than fork the repo and run my own version of the extension as gonz suggests, I just keep a custom copy of the grammar file elixir.json along with a custom color scheme/theme file based on ST3’s Monokai in a private repo under ~/.vscode/extensions.

When I want to make tweaks to syntax highlighting, I just edit the elixir.json grammar and optionally the theme file, then run an .exs script which copies it over the installed extension’s files. Whenever the extension updates itself I have to manually re-run the script to copy over the files again. This is a pain but easier IMO than the fork…pull from upstream…merge option every time there is a new extension release.

Here is the snippet of JSON you will need in your custom elixir.json file located at ~/.vscode/extensions/JakeBecker.elixir-ls-0.2.10/syntaxes and it should work out-of-the-box with any color scheme you like:

{
  "comment": "treat @spec as a comment/documentation to de-emphasize",
  "begin": "@spec ",
  "beginCaptures": {
    "0": {
      "name": "comment.documentation.spec.elixir"
    }
  },
  "while": "(^|\\G)(?!\\s*(def |defp ))",
  "contentName": "comment.documentation.spec.elixir"
}

This assumes the @spec line(s) are directly before a def or defp line.

Please let me know if this helps or if you’d like me to put a gist up.

Uhh, why would you not want to? Types put into comments is as good as no types at all as far as the compiler is concerned… o.O

Do note, dialyzer is part of and comes with the BEAM/OTP.

Add it as a git pre-commit hook or in your CI or as part of your compilation command itself.

I would so very much love this instead:

def some_function(some_arg :: SomeType.t()) :: SomeOtherType.t() do
  ...
end

Then have each head be properly combined and all finally as a BEAM spec.

I don’t really agree, but why not just change your theme to make up for it? It’s not very likely to change based on the idea of it being too visually distinctive.