Metals server fails to start on an empty directory

[CMajeri]

Describe the bug

Metals server fails to start on an empty directory.

To Reproduce Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Make an empty dir
2. Open vscode
3. Click on "New scala project"
4. error "client is not running"

logs full of

[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.
[Error - 8:31:48 AM] Client Metals: connection to server is erroring. Shutting down server.

Would be great if we could get the server's error somewhere (no .metals dir)

Expected behavior
Stuff should work

Installation:

• Operating system: Linux
• VSCode version: 1.91.9
• VSCode extension version: 1.39.1
• Metals version: (found in VSCode settings, under metals.serverVersion) 1.3.5

Additional context

Tested with openjdk 17 and 21.
Set via JAVA_HOME env var.
I tried making it work on a real project first, gave up, opened vscode on empty dir, same error

Search terms

[tgodzik]

Thanks for reporting! Do you get any information in Metals Output? What did you set JAVA_HOME to?

[CMajeri]

Hi, sorry for the delay, I had issues with notifications...
I'm running:

$ export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-21-openjdk

I tried with openjdk 17 as well, logs seem to indicate that the jdk is picked up correclt. If I unset the var it reports trying to install it with coursier, but not when I do have the env var

[tgodzik]

So it's possible that we are picking up jvmopts from the local directory that interfere with metals. Do you have anything set in .jvmopts file inside the directory? Does it happen on every project?