# 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/<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 `$HOME/.cargo/bin` .
Now copy the `runtime/` directory somewhere. Helix will by default look for the
runtime inside the same folder as the executable, but that can be overriden via
the `HELIX_RUNTIME` environment variable.
> NOTE: You should set this to <path to repository>/runtime in development (if
> running via cargo).
>
> `export HELIX_RUNTIME=$PWD/runtime`
If you want to embed the `runtime/` directory into the Helix binary you can build
it with:
```
cargo install --path helix-term --features "embed_runtime"
```
## Arch Linux
There are two packages available from AUR:
- `helix-bin` : contains prebuilt binary from GitHub releases
- `helix-git` : builds the master branch of this repository
## 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/good%20first%20issue ) 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).
