C

C support is available natively in Zed.

• Tree Sitter: tree-sitter/tree-sitter-c
• Language Server: clangd/clangd

Clangd: Force detect as C

Clangd out of the box assumes mixed C++/C projects. If you have a C-only project you may wish to instruct clangd to all files as C using the -xc flag. To do this, create a .clangd file in the root of your project with the following:

CompileFlags:
  Add: [-xc]

By default clang and gcc by will recognize *.C and *.H (uppercase extensions) as C++ and not C and so Zed too follows this convention. If you are working with a C-only project (perhaps one with legacy uppercase pathing like FILENAME.C) you can override this behavior by adding this to your settings:

{
  "file_types": {
    "C": ["C", "H"]
  }
}

Formatting

By default Zed will use the clangd language server for formatting C code. The Clangd is the same as the clang-format CLI tool. To configure this you can add a .clang-format file. For example:

---
BasedOnStyle: GNU
IndentWidth: 2
---

See Clang-Format Style Options for a complete list of options.

You can trigger formatting via cmd-shift-i|ctrl-shift-i or the editor: format action from the command palette or by adding format_on_save to your Zed settings:

  "languages": {
    "C": {
      "format_on_save": "on",
      "tab_size": 2
    }
  }

See Clang-Format Style Options for a complete list of options.