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.
README
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.
Plugins support (linter, spell checker, LSP, DAP, Git, and more).
Folder / Project Settings (*)
In ecode, folders are treated as projects, similar to other code editors. However, ecode distinguishes itself by using the repository's .gitignore file as a project configuration to streamline file management.
Automatic File Filtering
ecode automatically excludes files listed in the .gitignore file when indexing project files. This ensures that only relevant files are considered for project-wide searches and navigation, resulting in faster and more accurate search outcomes.
Customizing File Inclusion
To override .gitignore filtering, ecode supports two configuration files in the .ecode/ subfolder:
.prjallowed: Add glob patterns to include files ignored by .gitignore, making them available for indexing and searching.
.prjdisallowed: Add glob patterns to exclude files that are not ignored by .gitignore, providing precise control over file visibility.
Supported File Types
By default, ecode indexes only file types it officially supports. Unsupported files are excluded unless their patterns are explicitly added to the .ecode/.prjallowed file.
This approach ensures an efficient and tailored project management experience with flexible customization options.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 overwritable 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:
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).
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=.
Custom languages support
Users can add support for new languages with a very simple JSON file format.
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).
*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.
ecode
