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