csharp-ls-vs

C# Language Server - Visual Studio Enhanced Fork

Enhanced by Zach Christmas | Original by Saulius Menkevičius

This is a fork of the excellent csharp-language-server project with enhancements for Visual Studio MSBuild support and lazy solution loading.

🚀 What's New in This Fork

Visual Studio MSBuild Support

• ✅ Automatic detection of Visual Studio Community/Professional installations
• ✅ Environment variable integration (VS170COMNTOOLS and future versions)
• ✅ Custom MSBuild path configuration options
• ✅ Intelligent fallback to auto-discovery

Lazy Solution Loading

• ⚡ On-demand loading - solutions load only when you open C# files
• 🚀 Improved startup performance - no more waiting for all solutions to load
• 🎯 Multi-solution support - handle complex workspaces efficiently
• 💾 Memory optimization - only loads what you're actively working on

📦 Installation

# Install as global .NET tool
dotnet tool install --global csharp-ls-vs

# Verify installation
csharp-ls-vs --version

⚙️ Usage

Command Line Options

# Basic usage
csharp-ls-vs

# With specific solution
csharp-ls-vs --solution MySolution.sln

# With custom MSBuild path (Visual Studio)
csharp-ls-vs --msbuildpath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin"

# With custom MSBuild executable
csharp-ls-vs --msbuildexepath "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio\2022\Community\MSBuild\Current\Bin\MSBuild.exe"

VS Code Integration

Use with the companion VS Code extension: csharp-ls-vs

🛠️ Requirements

• .NET 9.0 SDK or later
• Visual Studio Community/Professional (recommended for MSBuild)
• Windows (primary platform, may work on other platforms)

📄 Attribution & License

🙏 Original Work

This project is a fork of the outstanding work by:

• Saulius Menkevičius - Original csharp-language-server

🔧 Fork Enhancements

• Zach Christmas - Visual Studio MSBuild support and lazy loading features

📋 License

This project maintains the same MIT license as the original work.

⚠️ Support Notice

This is a fork with limited support. For general language server issues not related to Visual Studio MSBuild or lazy loading, please check the original project first.

For issues specific to this fork's enhancements, please use the fork's issue tracker.

🔗 Related Projects

• Original Language Server: razzmatazz/csharp-language-server
• VS Code Extension Fork: zachristmas/vscode-csharp-ls-vs
• Original VS Code Extension: vytautassurvila/vscode-csharp-ls

Thank you to the original authors for their excellent foundation! 🎉