# Flow Control: a programmer's text editor This is my Zig text editor. It is under active development, but usually stable and is my daily driver for most things coding related. https://github.com/neurocyte/flow/assets/1552770/97aae817-c209-4c08-bc65-0a0bf1f2d4c6 # Requirements - A modern terminal with 24bit color and kitty keyboard protocol support. Kitty, Foot and Ghostty are the only recommended terminals at this time. Most other terminals will work, but with reduced functionality. - NerdFonts support - Linux, MacOS, (somewhat experimental) Windows, Android (Termux) or FreeBSD. Other BSDs probably work too, but nobody has tried it yet. - A UTF-8 locale (very important!) # Building Make sure your system meets the requirements listed above. Flow tracks zig master most of the time. Build with: ```shell zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast ``` Sometimes zig master may introduce breaking changes and Flow may take a few days to catch up. In that case there is a simple zig wrapper script provided that will download and build with the last known compatible version of zig. The version is stored in `build.zig.version`. Build with the zig wrapper: ```shell ./zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast ``` The zig wrapper places the downloaded zig compiler in the `.cache` directory and does not touch your system. It requires `bash`, `curl` and `jq` to run. Thanks to Zig you may also cross-compile from any host to pretty much any target. For example: ```shell zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dtarget=x86_64-windows --prefix zig-out/x86_64-windows zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dtarget=x86_64-macos-none --prefix zig-out/x86_64-macos zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast -Dtarget=aarch64-linux-musl --prefix zig-out/aarch64-linux -Dcpu=baseline ``` # Running Flow Control The output binary is: ```shell zig-out/bin/flow ``` Place it in your path for convenient access: ```shell sudo cp zig-out/bin/flow /usr/local/bin ``` Flow Control is a single statically linked binary. No further runtime is required. You may install it on another system by simply copying the binary. ```shell scp zig-out/bin/flow root@otherhost:/usr/local/bin ``` Configuration is mostly dynamically maintained with various commands in the UI. It stored under the standard user configuration path. Usually `~/.config/flow`. (%APPDATA%\Roaming\flow on Windows) Logs, traces and per-project most recently used file lists are stored in the standard user runtime cache directory. Usually `~/.cache/flow`. Files to load may be specifed on the command line: ```shell flow fileA.zig fileB.zig ``` Common target line specifiers are supported too: ```shell flow file.txt:123 ``` Or Vim style: ```shell flow file.txt +123 ``` Use the --language option to force the file type of a file: ```shell flow --language bash ~/.bash_profile ``` See `flow --help` for the full list of command line options. # Terminal configuration Kitty, Ghostty and most other terminals have default keybindings that conflict with common editor commands. I highly recommend rebinding them to keys that are not generally used anywhere else. For Kitty rebinding `kitty_mod` is usually enough: ``` kitty_mod ctrl+alt ``` For Ghostty each conflicting binding has to be reconfigured individually. # Features - fast TUI interface. no user interaction should take longer than one frame (6ms) (even debug builds) - tree sitter based syntax highlighting - linting (diagnostics) and code navigation (goto definition) via language server - multi cursor editing support - first class mouse support (yes, even with a scrollbar that actually works properly!) (no mouse support on Windows yet) - vscode compatible keybindings (thanks to kitty keyboard protocol) - vim compatible keybindings (the standard vimtutor bindings, more on request) - excellent unicode support including 2027 mode - hybrid rope/piece-table buffer for fast loading, saving and editing with hundreds of cursors - theme support (compatible with vscode themes via the flow-themes project) - infinite undo/redo (at least until you run out of ram) - stuff I've forgotten to mention... # Features in progress (aka, the road to 1.0) - completion UI/LSP support for completion - find in files - command palette - persistent undo/redo - file watcher for auto reload # Features planned for the future - multi tty support (shared editor sessions across multiple ttys) - multi host editing - multi user editing # Community ![Discord](https://img.shields.io/discord/1214308467553341470) Join our [Discord](https://discord.com/invite/4wvteUPphx) server or use the discussions section here on GitHub to meet with other Flow users!