Differentiate between local and global variables

[DeidaraMC]

Currently the lsp assigns variable.other.lua to both local and global variables preventing us from letting them have unique highlight colours.
Could someone point me or anyone else interested in contributing to this issue towards the right files to look into to change this behaviour?

[tomlau10]

(assuming you are using vscode, I don't know for other editors)

• First you have to turn on semantic coloring Lua.semantic.enable (it should be true by default)
• then for global variables it will have the following semantic token type, which has higher precedence than standard textmate token type:

semantic token type	variable
modifiers		global
foreground		variable.global.lua

=> it will follow variable.global:lua rule under editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations, instead of the variable.other.lua rule under textMateRules of editor.tokenColorCustomizations. So you can distinguish between them.

Changing the highlight of global variables

• As explained above, after enabling semantic coloring, global variables will be affected by the variable.global:lua rule under editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations, below is a sample config to change it:

    "editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations": {
        "[theme name for following rules to be active]": {
            "rules": {
                "variable.global:lua": "#ffffff",
            },
        },
    },

• Here is a more detailed guide for the config schema of editor.semanticTokenColorCustomizations: https://medium.com/@danromans/how-to-customize-semantic-token-colorization-with-visual-studio-code-ac3eab96141b

My own configs for reference

• I use One Dark Pro theme, it defaults the global and local variables to dark red (I don't know how to describe that color accurately 🙈 )
• But I prefer local variables to be of light grey and keep that red color for global
• So I instead modify the variable.other.lua rule under textMateRules of editor.tokenColorCustomizations (which should not affect global variables, because they are not using this rule)

    "editor.tokenColorCustomizations": {
        "[One Dark*]": {
            "textMateRules": [
                {
                    "scope": "variable.other.lua",
                    "settings": {
                        "foreground": "#ABB2BF",
                    }
                },
            ]
        }
    },

• A screenshot of my custom configs, local and global variable have different highlight colors
  

[BreakBB]

I am also interested in a solution for this. However I am using IntelliJ IDEA and connected the LuaLS directly, without one of the Lua plugins. I didn't find a way yet to get a proper coloring to distinguish global and local variables.