mirror of
https://github.com/neovim/neovim.git
synced 2024-09-17 20:58:20 -04:00
Document plans for the project
This commit is contained in:
Thiago de Arruda
parent
930f26d1ed
commit
c1eb60380c
193
README.md
193
README.md
@ -1,5 +1,191 @@
|
||||
Dependencies
|
||||
============
|
||||
#neovim
|
||||
|
||||
###Introduction
|
||||
|
||||
Vim is a powerful text editor with a big, increasing community. Even though it
|
||||
is more than 20 years old, people still extend and improve it, mostly using
|
||||
vimscript or one of the supported scripting languages.
|
||||
|
||||
###Problem
|
||||
|
||||
Over its 20 years of life, vim has accumulated about 300k lines of scary C89
|
||||
code that very few people understand or have the guts to mess with.
|
||||
|
||||
Another issue, is that as the only person responsible for maintaing vim's big
|
||||
codebase, Bram Moolenaar has to be extra-careful before accepting patches,
|
||||
because once merged, the new code will be his responsibility.
|
||||
|
||||
These problems make it pretty hard to have new features and bug fixes merged
|
||||
into the core. Vim just cant keep up with the development speed of its plugin
|
||||
echosystem.
|
||||
|
||||
###Solution
|
||||
|
||||
Neovim is a vim fork that seeks to aggressively refactor vim in order to achieve
|
||||
the following goals:
|
||||
|
||||
- Simplify maintenance to improve the speed that bug fixes and
|
||||
features get merged.
|
||||
- Split the responsibility between multiple developers.
|
||||
- Enable the implementation of new/modern user interfaces without any modifications
|
||||
to the core source code.
|
||||
- Improve the extensibility power with a new plugin architecture based on
|
||||
external processes. Plugins will be written in any programming language
|
||||
without any explicit support from the editor. This can be saw as a better
|
||||
implementation of the [job control patch](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/vim_dev/QF7Bzh1YABU)
|
||||
|
||||
Those goals should be achieved with little impact on vim's editing model or
|
||||
vimscript in general. Most vimscript plugins should continue to work normally.
|
||||
|
||||
The following topics summarizes the major changes that will be performed:
|
||||
|
||||
* <a href="#legacy"><b>Legacy support and compile-time features</b></a>
|
||||
* <a href="#platform"><b>Platform-specific code </b></a>
|
||||
* <a href="#plugins"><b>New plugin architecture</b></a>
|
||||
* <a href="#gui"><b>New GUI architecture</b></a>
|
||||
* <a href="#split"><b>Split into many repositories</b></a>
|
||||
|
||||
<a name="legacy"></a>
|
||||
##### Legacy support and compile-time features
|
||||
|
||||
Vim has a significant amount of code dedicated to supporting legacy systems and
|
||||
compilers. All that code increases the maintainance burden and will be removed.
|
||||
|
||||
Most optional features will no longer be optional, with the exception of some
|
||||
broken and useless fetures(eg: netbeans integration, sun workshop) which will be
|
||||
removed permanently. Vi emulation will also be removed(probably leave the 'set
|
||||
nocompatible' command as a no-op).
|
||||
|
||||
These changes wont affect most users. Those that only have a C89 compiler
|
||||
installed or develop on legacy systems such as Amiga, BeOS or MSDOS have two
|
||||
choices:
|
||||
|
||||
- Upgrade their software.
|
||||
- Continue using vim
|
||||
|
||||
<a name="platform"></a>
|
||||
##### Platform-specific code
|
||||
|
||||
Most of the platform-specific code will be removed and
|
||||
[libuv](https://github.com/joyent/libuv) will be used to handle system
|
||||
differences. libuv has support for most unixes and windows, so the vast
|
||||
majority of vim's community will be supported.
|
||||
|
||||
<a name="plugins"></a>
|
||||
##### New plugin architecture
|
||||
|
||||
All code supporting embedded scripting language interpreters will be replaced
|
||||
by a new plugin system that will support extensions written in any programming
|
||||
language.
|
||||
|
||||
Compatibility layers will be provided for easily porting vim plugins written in some
|
||||
of the currently supported scripting languages such as python or ruby.
|
||||
|
||||
This is how the new plugin system will work:
|
||||
|
||||
- Plugins are long-running programs/jobs that communicate with vim through
|
||||
stdin/stdout using msgpack-rpc or json-rpc.
|
||||
- Vim will discover and run these programs at startup, keeping two-way communication
|
||||
channels with each plugin.
|
||||
- Plugins will be able to listen to events and send commands to vim
|
||||
asynchronously.
|
||||
|
||||
Here's a sample plugin session using [json-rpc](http://www.jsonrpc.org/specification) (jsonrpc version omitted):
|
||||
|
||||
```
|
||||
plugin -> vim: {"id": 1, "method": "listenEvent", "params": {"eventName": "keyPressed"}}
|
||||
vim -> plugin: {"id": 1, "result": true}
|
||||
vim -> plugin: {"method": "event", "params": {"name": "keyPressed", "eventArgs": {"keys": ["C"]}}}
|
||||
vim -> plugin: {"method": "event", "params": {"name": "keyPressed", "eventArgs": {"keys": ["Ctrl", "Space"]}}}
|
||||
plugin -> vim: {"id": 2, "method": "showPopup", "params": {"size": {"width": 10, "height": 2} "position": {"column": 2, "line": 3}, "items": ["Completion1", "Completion2"]}}
|
||||
plugin -> vim: {"id": 2, "result": true}}
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
That shows the conversation between vim and an hypotetical completion plugin
|
||||
that popups completions when the user presses Ctrl+Space. The above scheme gives
|
||||
neovim near limitless extensibility and also improves stability as plugins will
|
||||
be automatically sandboxed from the main executable.
|
||||
|
||||
This system can also easily emulate scripting languages interfaces to vim. A
|
||||
plugin could, for example, emulate the current python interface by discovering
|
||||
python scripts in vim's runtime dir and exposing a 'vim' module with an API
|
||||
matching the current one. Calls to the API would simply be translated to
|
||||
json-rpc messages sent to vim.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
<a name="gui"></a>
|
||||
##### New GUI architecture
|
||||
|
||||
Another contributing factor to vim's huge codebase is the explicit support for
|
||||
dozens of widget toolkits for GUI interfaces. Like the legacy code support, gui
|
||||
handling code will be removed from neovim's core.
|
||||
|
||||
Neovim will handle GUIs similarly to how it will handle plugins:
|
||||
|
||||
- GUIs are separate programs, possibly written in different programming
|
||||
languages.
|
||||
- Neovim will use its own stdin/stdout to receive input and send updates, again
|
||||
using json-rpc or msgpack-rpc.
|
||||
|
||||
The difference between plugins and GUIs is that plugins will be started by
|
||||
neovim, where GUIs will start neovim(or perhaps attach to a running session).
|
||||
Here's a sample diagram of the process tree:
|
||||
|
||||
GUI program
|
||||
|
|
||||
---> Neovim
|
||||
|
|
||||
---> Plugin 1
|
||||
|
|
||||
---> Plugin 2
|
||||
|
|
||||
---> Plugin 3
|
||||
|
||||
Sample:
|
||||
|
||||
```js
|
||||
gui -> vim: {"id": 1, "method": "initClient", "params": {"size": {"rows": 20, "columns": 25}}}
|
||||
vim -> gui: {"id": 1, "result": {"clientId": 1}}
|
||||
vim -> gui: {"method": "redraw", "params": {"clientId": 1, "lines": {"5": " Welcome to neovim! "}}}
|
||||
gui -> vim: {"id": 2, "method": "keyPress", "params": {"keys": ["H", "e", "l", "l", "o"]}}
|
||||
vim -> gui: {"method": "redraw", "params": {"clientId": 1, "lines": {"1": "Hello ", "5": " "}}}
|
||||
```
|
||||
|
||||
This new GUI architecture creates many interesting possibilities:
|
||||
|
||||
- Modern GUIs written in high-level programming languages that integrate better
|
||||
with the operating system. We can have GUIs written using C#/WPF on
|
||||
Windows or Ruby/Cocoa on Mac.
|
||||
- Plugins will be able emit custom events that may be handled directly by GUIs.
|
||||
This will enable the implementaton of advanced features such as sublime's
|
||||
minimap.
|
||||
- A multiplexing daemon could could keep neovim instances running in a
|
||||
headless server, while multiple remote GUIs could attach/detach to share
|
||||
editing sessions.
|
||||
|
||||
<a name="split"></a>
|
||||
##### Split into many repositories
|
||||
|
||||
Neovim will code will be split across many repositories in the [neovim
|
||||
organization](https://github.com/neovim). The organization will have separate
|
||||
repositories for GUIs, plugins, runtime files(official vimscript) and
|
||||
distributions. This way neovim will receive improvements much faster as the
|
||||
patches wont have to pass through the approval of a single person.
|
||||
|
||||
###Status
|
||||
|
||||
Here's a list of things that have been done so far:
|
||||
|
||||
- Source tree was cleaned up, leaving only files necessary for
|
||||
compilation/testing of the core.
|
||||
- Source files were processed with
|
||||
[unifdef](http://freecode.com/projects/unifdef) to remove tons of FEAT_*
|
||||
macros
|
||||
- Files were processed with [uncrustify](http://uncrustify.sourceforge.net/) to
|
||||
normalize source code formatting.
|
||||
- The autotools build system was replaced by [cmake](http://www.cmake.org/)
|
||||
|
||||
###Dependencies
|
||||
|
||||
For Ubuntu 12.04:
|
||||
|
||||
@ -12,8 +198,7 @@ TODO: Arch instructions
|
||||
TODO: OSX instructions
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Building
|
||||
========
|
||||
###Building
|
||||
|
||||
To generate the `Makefile`s:
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
Loading…
Reference in New Issue
Block a user