# Helix
[](https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/actions)
A kakoune / neovim inspired editor, written in Rust.
The editing model is very heavily based on kakoune; during development I found
myself agreeing with most of kakoune's design decisions.
For more information, see the [website ](https://helix-editor.com ) or
[documentation ](https://docs.helix-editor.com/ ).
All shortcuts/keymaps can be found [in the documentation on the website ](https://docs.helix-editor.com/keymap.html )
# Features
- Vim-like modal editing
- Multiple selections
- Built-in language server support
- Smart, incremental syntax highlighting and code editing via tree-sitter
It's a terminal-based editor first, but I'd like to explore a custom renderer
(similar to emacs) in wgpu or skulpin.
# Installation
Note: Only certain languages have indentation definitions at the moment. Check
`runtime/queries/<lang>/` for `indents.toml` .
We provide packaging for various distributions, but here's a quick method to
build from source.
```
git clone --recurse-submodules --shallow-submodules -j8 https://github.com/helix-editor/helix
cd helix
cargo install --path helix-term
```
This will install the `hx` binary to `$HOME/.cargo/bin` .
Helix also needs it's runtime files so make sure to copy/symlink the `runtime/` directory into the
config directory (for example `~/.config/helix/runtime` on Linux/macOS). This location can be overriden
via the `HELIX_RUNTIME` environment variable.
Packages already solve this for you by wrapping the `hx` binary with a wrapper
that sets the variable to the install dir.
> NOTE: running via cargo also doesn't require setting explicit `HELIX_RUNTIME` path, it will automatically
> detect the `runtime` directory in the project root.
[](https://repology.org/project/helix/versions)
## MacOS
Helix can be installed on MacOS through homebrew via:
```
brew tap helix-editor/helix
brew install helix
```
# Contributing
Contributors are very welcome! **No contribution is too small and all contributions are valued.**
Some suggestions to get started:
- You can look at the [good first issue ](https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/labels/E-easy ) label on the issue tracker.
- Help with packaging on various distributions needed!
- To use print debugging to the `~/.cache/helix/helix.log` file, you must:
* Print using `log::info!` , `warn!` , or `error!` . (`log::info!("helix!")`)
* Pass the appropriate verbosity level option for the desired log level. (`hx -v < file > ` for info, more `v` s for higher severity inclusive)
- If your preferred language is missing, integrating a tree-sitter grammar for
it and defining syntax highlight queries for it is straight forward and
doesn't require much knowledge of the internals.
We provide an [architecture.md ](./docs/architecture.md ) that should give you
a good overview of the internals.
# Getting help
Discuss the project on the community [Matrix Space ](https://matrix.to/#/#helix-community:matrix.org ) (make sure to join `#helix-editor:matrix.org` if you're on a client that doesn't support Matrix Spaces yet).
