ecode

ecode is a lightweight multi-platform code editor designed for modern hardware with a focus on responsiveness and performance. It has been developed with the hardware-accelerated eepp GUI, which provides the core technology for the editor. The project comes as the first serious project using the eepp GUI, and it's currently being developed to improve the eepp GUI library as part of one of its main objectives.

Screenshots

For more screenshots checkout running on macOS, running on Windows, running on Haiku, low dpi, code completion, terminal, file locator, file formats, global find, global replace, linter.

Notable Features

• Lightweight
• Portable
• Uncluttered GUI
• Syntax Highlighting (including nested syntax highlighting, supporting over 90 languages and LSP semantic highlighting)
• Multi-cursor support
• LSP support
• Debugger support via Debug Adapter Protocol
• Git integration
• Terminal support
• Command Palette
• Auto-Completion
• Customizable Linter support
• Customizable Formatter support
• Customizable Color-Schemes
• Customizable keyboard bindings
• Configurable build pipelines
• Fast global search (and replace)
• Minimap
• Unlimited editor splitting
• Easily extendable language support
• Customizable and scalable (non-integer) GUI (thanks to eepp GUI)
• Dark & Light Mode
• File system Tree View (with real-time file system changes)
• Smart hot-reload of files
• Folders as Projects with .gitignore support *
• Per Project Settings
• Smart and fast project file locator
• Multiline search and replace
• Project/Folder state persist between sessions
• Soft-wrap
• Code-folding
• Session Snapshot & Periodic Backup
• Perl Regular Expressions and Lua pattern searches support
• Plugins support.

Folder / Project Settings (*)

ecode treats folders as projects, like many other editors. The main difference is that it also tries to automatically sanitize the project files by filtering out any file that it's filtered in the repository .gitignore files. The idea is to use the .gitignore file as a project setting. The project files will be the ones used to find files in the project and do global searches. Usually, this translates into much better results for any project-related search. There's also a very simple mechanism to allow visibility of filtered files by the .gitignore, by adding a file with the allowed filtered patterns in a subfolder over the folder loaded, creating a file in .ecode/.prjallowed with the necessary glob patterns allowing the filtered patterns to be "unfiltered". ecode will only add files that are supported by the editor, the editor won't try to do anything with files that are not officially supported.

Philosophy

Some points to illustrate the project philosophy:

• Extendable functionality but in a controlled environment. New features and new plugins are accepted, but the author will supervise any new content that might affect the application quality and performance.
• Load as few files and resources as possible and load asynchronously as many resources as possible. Startup time of the application is considered critical.
• Use the machine resources but not abuse them.
• The editor implementation will try to prioritize performance and memory usage over simplicity.
• Developed with modern hardware in mind: expected hardware should have low file system latency (SSD), high cores count and decent GPU acceleration.
• Plugins and non-main functionality should never lock the main thread (GUI thread) or at least should block it as little as possible.
• Terminals are part of the developer workflow.

Live Demo

ecode can be compiled to WASM and run in any modern browser. There are no plans to focus the development on the web version (at least for the moment) since there are plenty of good solutions out there. But you can give it a try:

Demo here

Demo Clarifications

• You'll need a modern browser with SharedArrayBuffer support
• Linter, Formatter,, LSP Client and Debugger plugins won't work since they work by running other processes (except for the native formatters that are available)
• WebGL renderer isn't optimized, so it's not as fast as it could/should be (still, performance is good in chromium based browsers)
• Demo is designed for desktop resolutions (mobile is unusable, IME keyboard won't show up due to an emscripten limitation)

Source Code

Currently, the source code is located at the eepp project repository. ecode editor source is located at src/tools/ecode. ecode is being used to actively improve and iterate the eepp GUI library. At some point, it will be migrated to this repository. The ecode repository should be used for issues and documentation. PRs for ecode will be accepted at the eepp repository.

Build from Source

There are scripts for each supported platform ready to build the application. For Linux and macOS it is trivial to build the project, you'll just need to have GCC/Clang installed and also the development library from libSDL2. Windows build script is currently a cross-compiling script and it uses mingw64. But it also can be easily built with Visual Studio and libSDL2 development libraries installed. For more information on how to build manually a project please follow the eepp build instructions. The project name is always ecode (so if you are building with make, you'll need to run make ecode).

• Linux build script can be found here. Running build.app.sh will try to build the AppImage package and tar.gz with the compressed application. ecode folder will contain the uncompressed application.
• macOS build script can be found here. Running build.app.sh will create ecode.app. Run create.dmg.sh to create the dmg file. ecode.app folder will contain the uncompressed application.
• Windows cross-compiling build script can be found here. Running build.app.sh will create a zip file with the zipped application package. ecode folder will contain the uncompressed application. To build from Windows follow the instructions here.
• FreeBSD build script can be found here. Running build.app.sh will try to build a tar.gz with the compressed application. ecode.app folder will contain the uncompressed application.
• Haiku build script can be found here. Running build.app.sh will try to build a tar.gz with the compressed application. ecode.app folder will contain the uncompressed application.

Nightly Builds

Nightly builds are being distributed here for the more impatient users. ecode is being developed actively, nightly builds may not be stable for daily usage unless there's a pending unreleased fix required for the user.

Language support

ecode is constantly adding more languages support and also supports extending it's language support via configuration files (for every feature: syntax highlighting, LSP, linter and formatter).

Language support table

Language	Highlight	LSP	Linter	Formatter	Debugger
.htaccess	✓	None	None	None	None
.ignore file	✓	None	None	None	None
[x]it!	✓	None	None	None	None
ada	✓	ada_language_server	None	None	None
adept	✓	AdeptLSP	None	None	None
angelscript	✓	None	None	None	None
awk script	✓	None	None	None	None
bat	✓	None	None	None	None
bazel	✓	None	None	None	None
bend	✓	None	None	None	None
blueprint	✓	None	None	None	None
brainfuck	✓	None	None	None	None
buzz	✓	None	None	None	None
c	✓	clangd	cppcheck	clang-format	gdb / lldb-dap
carbon	✓	None	None	None	None
clojure	✓	clojure-lsp	None	None	None
cmake	✓	cmake-language-server	None	None	None
cpp	✓	clangd	cppcheck	clang-format	gdb / lldb-dap
crystal	✓	crystalline	None	None	None
csharp	✓	OmniSharp	None	None	None
css	✓	emmet-language-server	None	native	None
d	✓	serve-d	None	None	gdb
dart	✓	dart language-server	None	None	dart
diff	✓	None	None	None	None
dockerfile	✓	docker-langserver	None	None	None
elixir	✓	elixir-ls	None	None	None
elm	✓	elm-language-server	None	None	None
environment file	✓	None	None	None	None
fantom	✓	None	None	None	None
fortran	✓	fortls	None	None	gdb
fstab	✓	None	None	None	None
gdscript	✓	None	None	None	None
glsl	✓	glsl_analyzer	None	None	None
go	✓	gopls	None	gopls	gdb / delve
graphql	✓	None	None	None	None
groovy	✓	None	None	None	None
hare	✓	None	None	None	None
haskell	✓	haskell-language-server	hlint	ormolu	None
haxe	✓	None	None	None	None
haxe compiler arguments	✓	None	None	None	None
hlsl	✓	None	None	None	None
html	✓	emmet-language-server	None	prettier	None
ini	✓	None	None	None	None
jai	✓	None	None	None	None
java	✓	jdtls	None	clang-format	None
javascript	✓	typescript-language-server	eslint	prettier	None
javascriptreact	✓	typescript-language-server	None	None	None
json	✓	None	jq	native	None
julia	✓	LanguageServer.jl	None	None	None
kotlin	✓	kotlin-language-server	ktlint	ktlint	None
latex	✓	texlab	None	None	None
lobster	✓	None	None	None	None
lua	✓	lua-language-server	luacheck	None	None
makefile	✓	None	None	None	None
markdown	✓	None	None	None	None
meson	✓	None	None	None	None
moonscript	✓	None	None	None	None
nelua	✓	None	nelua	None	None
nim	✓	nimlsp	nim	None	None
objeck	✓	None	None	None	None
objective-c	✓	clangd	None	clang-format	None
ocaml	✓	OCaml-LSP	None	None	None
odin	✓	ols	None	None	lldb-dap
openscad	✓	None	None	None	None
pascal	✓	None	None	None	gdb
perl	✓	PerlNavigator	None	None	perl-ls
php	✓	phpactor	php	None	None
pico-8	✓	None	None	None	None
plaintext	✓	None	None	None	None
po	✓	None	None	None	None
pony	✓	None	None	None	None
postgresql	✓	None	None	None	None
powershell	✓	None	None	None	None
python	✓	pylsp	ruff	black	debugpy
r	✓	r languageserver	None	None	None
ring	✓	None	None	None	None
ruby	✓	solargraph	None	None	None
rust	✓	rust-analyzer	None	rustfmt	gdb / lldb-dap
sass	✓	emmet-language-server	None	None	None
scala	✓	metals	None	None	None
shellscript	✓	bash-language-server	None	None	None
smallbasic	✓	None	None	None	None
solidity	✓	solc	solhint	None	None
sql	✓	None	None	None	None
swift	✓	sourcekit-lsp	None	None	None
tcl	✓	None	None	None	None
teal	✓	None	tl	None	None
toml	✓	None	None	None	None
typescript	✓	typescript-language-server	eslint	prettier	None
typescriptreact	✓	typescript-language-server	None	None	None
v	✓	v-analyzer	None	v	None
vala	✓	vala-language-server	None	None	None
verilog	✓	None	None	None	None
visual basic	✓	None	None	None	None
vue	✓	vls	None	None	None
wren	✓	None	None	None	None
x86 assembly	✓	None	None	None	None
xml	✓	emmet-language-server	native	native	None
xtend	✓	None	None	None	None
yaml	✓	yaml-language-server	None	None	None
zig	✓	zls	zig	zig	lldb-dap

native

Native tag means that the feature is supported natively by ecode and it doesn't need any external tool to function.

Language support health

ecode brings a tool to display the current language support health. From ecode you can check its health status from Settings -> Tools -> Check Language Health, and from CLI you can use the --health flag: ecode --health. Use the health check flag to troubleshoot missing language servers, linters and formatters.

Check the health of all languages with ecode --health or ask for details about a specific language with ecode --health-lang=<lang>.

Plugins

Plugins extend the base code editor functionality. Currently all plugins are enabled by default, but they are optional and they can be disabled at any time. ecode implements an internal protocol that allow plugins to communicate with each other. The LSP protocol is going to be used as a base to implement the plugin communication. And, for example, the Linter plugin will consume the LSP to improve its diagnostics. Also the Auto Complete module will request assistance from the LSP, if available, to improve the completions and to provide signature help.

Linter

Linter support is provided by executing already stablished linters from each language. ecode provides support for several languages by default and can be extended easily by expanding the linters.json configuration.

For more information read the linter documentation.

LSP Client

LSP support is provided by executing already stablished LSP from each language. ecode provides support for several languages by default and can be extended easily by expanding the lspclient.json configuration.

For more information read the lsp client documentation.

Debugger

Debugger support is provided by the implementation the Debug Adapter Protocol. ecode is able to debug any language implementing this protocol, although the protocol is generic sometimes requires to support some of the languages some specific adaptation is needed, so initially the support is limited to the languages mentoined in the support list.

For more information on how to use the debugger read the debugger documentation.

Git integration

ecode provides some basic Git integration (more features will come in the future). Its main purpose is to help the user to do the most basics operations with Git. Some of the current features supported: git status and stats visualization (files states), commit, push, checkout, pull, fetch, fast-forward merge, creating+renaming+deleting branches, managing stashes. All stats will be automatically updated/refreshed in real time. There's also some basic configuration available.

For more information read the git integration documentation.

Auto Formatter

The formatter plugin works exactly like the linter plugin, but it will execute tools that auto-format code. ecode provides support for several languages by default with can be extended easily by expanding the formatters.json configuration.

For more information read the formatter documentation.

Auto Complete

The auto-complete plugin is in charge of providing suggestions for code-completion and signature help.

For more information read the auto-complete documentation.

XML Tools

The XML Tools plugin (disabled by default) provides some nice to have improvements when editing XML content.

For more information read the xml tools documentation.

Plugins configuration files location

ecode respects the standard configuration paths on each OS:

• Linux: uses XDG_CONFIG_HOME, usually translates to ~/.config/ecode/plugins
• macOS: uses Application Support folder in HOME, usually translates to ~/Library/Application Support/ecode/plugins
• Windows: uses APPDATA, usually translates to C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\ecode\plugins

Plugins important behaviors

All plugin configurations are designed to be overwriteable by the user. This means that the default configuration can be replaced with custom configurations from the user. For example, if the user wants to use a different linter, it just needs to declare a new linter definition in its own linter configuration file. The same applies to formatters and LSPs servers. Plugins will always implement a "config" for plugins customization, and will always implement a "keybindings" key to configure custom keybindings.

UI Customizations

ecode is highly customizable and extendable thanks to its several configuration files. If you're interested in creating new color schemes for the editor or terminal, or in creating new UI themes please check our documentation:

For more information read the UI Customization documentation.

Custom languages support

Users can add support for new languages with a very simple JSON file format.

For more information read the custom languages documentation.

Planned Features

Listed in no particular order:

• General polishing
• Improved plugin system (visual configuration, more flexibility/features)
• AI assistant plugin
• Snippets support
• Macros support
• Better integration with OSes

Long Term Planned Features

• Modal editing
• Maybe Remote development support
• Maybe Tree-sitter support

Collaborate

The author is more than open to collaborations. Any person interested in the project is invited to participate. Many features are still pending, and the project will grow much more over time. Please, collaborate. =)

FAQ

Why some characters are not being rendered correctly inside the editor?

Some Unicode characters won't be rendered in the editor out of the box. You'll need to change the default monospace font in favor of a font that supports the characters you want to see that are not being rendered. You could also change the default fallback font in the case you want to use a traditional monospaced font. The default fallback font should cover a wide range of languages but you could need some special font (currently covers CJK languages).

Current Limitations

• No font sub-pixel hinting *1 *2
• No VIM-mode / modal editing *3
• No text-shaping support. *1 *4
• No ligatures support (requires text-shaping) *1
• No BiDi support (requires text-shaping) *1

*1 Current eepp feature limitations.

*2 I'm not a fan of sub-pixel hinting. But I'm more than willing to implement it, I'm not very versed in the matter, so any help will be appreciated.

*3 I'm not a VIM user, and I'm not qualified to implement the VIM mode or any modal editing. PRs are welcome to support this.

*4 Some work has been done to support text-shaping but it's not ready for general usage. So it's a work in progress.

Author comments

This editor has a deeply rooted inspiration from the lite, lite-xl, QtCreator and Sublime Text editors. Several features were developed based on the lite/lite-xl implementations. Some features can be ported directly from lite: color-schemes and syntax-highlighting patterns (eepp implementation expands original lite implementation to add many more features).

ecode is being used mostly in Linux and macOS, it's not well tested in Windows. If you find any issues with the editor please report it here.

This is a work in progress, stability is not guaranteed. Please don't use it for critical tasks. I'm using the editor daily and is stable enough for me, but use it at your own risk.

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to

• Niels Lohmann for JSON for Modern C++

• Neil Henning for subprocess.h

• All the authors of the suckless terminal emulator

• Fredrik Aleksander for Hexe Terminal

• rxi for lite

• franko and all the collaborators for lite-xl

• Andreas Kling for SerenityOS

• And a lot more people!

Code License

MIT License