Defold.nvim - Batteries-included development environment for the Defold game engine, powered by Neovim

The Defoldmine
1

Or “How to turn Neovim into a Defold IDE” :slight_smile:

I’ve been wanting to use Neovim with Defold and I couldn’t get other solutions I’ve found to run so I made my own which my brother and I have been using for a while now and I thought its perhaps a good time to share the project.

Features

  • Code Hot-Reloading: Make code tweaks and see them live in Defold, no waiting.
  • Defold Control from Neovim: Run Defold commands right from Neovim with custom shortcuts.
  • LSP Integration: Get Defold API hints and autocomplete in Neovim’s built-in LSP.
  • Dependency Annotations: Auto-load LSP annotations for your Defold dependencies.
  • Debugger: Step through your code and dig into issues with ease.
  • Snippets: Insert pre-made code snippets to save time.

Supports Linux, macOS and Windows although I’m only using Linux so mac and Windows might still be a bit rough. I’ve done some testing in VMs but would appreciate some feedback

https://github.com/atomicptr/defold.nvim

Just follow the install and setup instructions in the README and you should be good to go (if not write me a message and I try to get it fixed).

The most annoying part here was getting the debugger to run, the Defold editor is using MobDebug internally so I thought it would be a good idea if we’d use that too which turned out to take a bit of effort. Neovim similar to VSCode uses the Debug Adapter Protocol these days (nvim-dap) so the fastest way was to implement a sort of bridge between MobDebug and Neovim using a custom DAP implementation which you can find here GitHub - atomicptr/mobdap: Debug adapter implementation for Lua / ModDebug · GitHub which perhaps can be of use for other editor projects god knows :).

13 Likes
2

Cool! We would like to make Defold compatible with DAP as it’s used in a lot of other IDEs.

4 Likes
3

hi, I’m a newbie in both defold and neovim and I find your plugin is really awesome, I try to install your plugin with lazyvim but it come with error:

no field package.preload[‘defold_nvim_sidecar’]
cache_loader: module ‘defold_nvim_sidecar’ not found
cache_loader_lib: module ‘defold_nvim_sidecar’ not found

can you help me with this issue, thank you very much!

4

Can you show me your plugin configuration (of defold.nvim)?

It sounds like you might not have included the build section (which is required to download the sidecar)

-- Example from https://github.com/atomicptr/defold.nvim
{
    "atomicptr/defold.nvim",
    version = '*',
    lazy = false,

    dependencies = {
        -- (Optional) Required when using the debugger
        "mfussenegger/nvim-dap",

        -- (Optional) Required when using snippets
        "L3MON4D3/LuaSnip",
    },

    -- This makes sure the native library downloads at installation
    build = function()
        require("defold").download()
    end,

    opts = {
        -- config options, see below
    },
}
5

yes, this is my config of plugin, I copy it from your github and modified a bit in opts to config terminal

{
“atomicptr/defold.nvim”,
version = “*”,
lazy = false,

dependencies = {
  -- (Optional) Required when using the debugger
  "mfussenegger/nvim-dap",

  -- (Optional) Required when using snippets
  "L3MON4D3/LuaSnip",
},

-- This makes sure the native library downloads at installation
build = function()
  require("defold").download()
end,

opts = {
  -- config options, see below
  launcher = {
    type = "terminal",
    executable = "ghostty",
  },
},
},
6

Ok that looks correct,

Can you try executing (neovim command prompt) :lua require("defold").download() manually? And then :messages in hopes that this throws an error :slight_smile:

If that doesn’t give us anything, there is a log file available, use := require("defold.service.os").cache_dir() that should give you the cache directory we’re using which contains a “logs” directory, could you send me the plugin.log file? On my setup its at $HOME/.cache/defold.nvim/logs/plugin.log

1 Like
7

I checked the log and see a bunch of this messages
[ERROR] 2026-03-29 17:56:24: unsupported platform: macos using unknown

I’m using MacOS Sonoma 14.5

8

Interesting, I’ve never tested this on ARM macs (only have an old Intel mac)

Can you show me what := vim.loop.os_uname() returns? Presumably I have a check wrong if it shows “unknown” there

1 Like
9

I might’ve found the issue, there was a problem with detecting the architecture that should now be resolved in 0.3.2, can you update and confirm if it works now?

( :Lazy and then U), restart and using := require("defold.sidecar").version should now return "0.3.2"

2 Likes
10

You’re awesome :clap: , after upgrade to 0.3.2 issue have fixed and now I can completely use my neovim as an IDE for defold, thank you so much about your plugin and your help :folded_hands:

2 Likes