922a57b3e7
The code from the refactor that I have been working on is
now more or less ready to be merged. These changes make some
breaking changes, notably with regards to the plugin
interface. Once a lot more documentation has been written, I
will release this code as micro 2.0. There are a lot of new
features, and in the coming days I will try to go through
the open issues to see exactly which ones are addressed by
the new features, and write lots more documentation
regarding what has been implemented.
Some highlights include:
* Simple autocompletion.
* Autocompletion (tab by default) will do a simple
"buffer completion" which will autocomplete according
to words used elsewhere in the buffer. In the future
plugin support could be added along with support for
interfacing with language-specific autocompletion
tools.
* Automatic backups.
* Backup files are stored in `~/.config/micro/backups`
for every open buffer and are saved roughly every 8
seconds if the buffer is being modified. Backups
are removed when the buffer is closed, but if micro
or the system crashes, any unsaved changes can be
recovered by re-opening the file (micro will auto-
recover) or by manually viewing the backup in the
`~/.config/micro/backups` directory.
* Configurable statusline.
* Configurable linter plugin.
* Resizeable splits.
* Complete re-organization of the code to support better go
modules and maintain a better directory structure.
* Better plugin interface with better access to the Go
standard library and internal Micro functions (lots of
documentation still needs to be written).
* Documentation still needs to be written, but in the
meantime please see the default plugins as examples
as they have been converted from their old versions
to be compatible with the new interface.
* Buffer synchronization when the same file is opened
multiple times.
* Keybindings and mouse support in the command bar.
* Support for non-utf8 encodings.
* General QoL improvements and bug fixes.
* Notably I believe the autoclose plugin crash issue is
fixed.
* No more plugin manager.
* Plugin installation will now be performed manually
by git cloning into the `~/.config/micro/plug`
directory. This may not be a highlight for some but
I believe it is much simpler, and there is no need
to have a heavyweight dependency manager. Perhaps
in the future, a good command-line tool can be made
to manage plugins if people would find it useful.
* Other features that I have forgotten.
Next I plan to write up more documentation for all the new
features, and make a "release candidate" for micro 2.0. I
will also be working to fix any bugs that come up (hopefully
not too many, but this is a big change and bound to have
some issues). After release I hope to focus more on
optimization (for example loading syntax files is currently
somewhat inefficient, and the bottleneck for startup time #1427).
Sorry for not being so active recently, but I hope merging
this big change can help me get back to more regular
development. Thanks to everyone for using micro and for
giving feedback and engaging with development online (even
if I don't always respond).
Merry Christmas!
Issues that are fixed/affected by this change:
Ref #1419 (configurable statusline)
Ref #1413 (cursor behaves better)
Ref #1401 (softwrap problems)
Ref #1383 (better save with sudo)
Ref #1424 (better save with sudo)
Ref #1382 (go modules)
Ref #1381 (install plugins from command line)
Ref #1357 (sorting -- textfilter)
Ref #1351 (custom linting)
Ref #1350 (sudo problem might be fixed)
Ref #1298 (readonly option)
Ref #1250 (autoclose bug)
Ref #1239 (go modules)
Ref #813 (autoclose bug)
Ref #812 (cursor sync across same buffers)
Ref #770 (resizeable panes)
Ref #635 (keybindings in infobar)
Ref #596 (disable builtin plugins)
Ref #550 (backups)
Ref #174 (autocompletion)
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| .github | ||
| assets | ||
| cmd/micro | ||
| data | ||
| internal | ||
| pkg | ||
| runtime | ||
| tools | ||
| .editorconfig | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| .gitmodules | ||
| .travis.yml | ||
| go.mod | ||
| go.sum | ||
| LICENSE | ||
| LICENSE-THIRD-PARTY | ||
| Makefile | ||
| README.md | ||
| snapcraft.yaml | ||
Micro is a terminal-based text editor that aims to be easy to use and intuitive, while also taking advantage of the full capabilities of modern terminals. It comes as one single, batteries-included, static binary with no dependencies, and you can download and use it right now.
As the name indicates, micro aims to be somewhat of a successor to the nano editor by being easy to install and use in a pinch, but micro also aims to be enjoyable to use full time, whether you work in the terminal because you prefer it (like me), or because you need to (over ssh).
Here is a picture of micro editing its source code.
To see more screenshots of micro, showcasing all of the default colorschemes, see here.
You can also check out the website for Micro at https://micro-editor.github.io.
Table of Contents
Features
- Easy to use and to install
- No dependencies or external files are needed -- just the binary you can download further down the page
- Multiple cursors
- Common keybindings (ctrl-s, ctrl-c, ctrl-v, ctrl-z...)
- Keybindings can be rebound to your liking
- Sane defaults
- You shouldn't have to configure much out of the box (and it is extremely easy to configure)
- Splits and tabs
- Nano-like menu to help you remember the keybindings
- Extremely good mouse support
- This means mouse dragging to create a selection, double click to select by word, and triple click to select by line
- Cross platform (It should work on all the platforms Go runs on)
- Note that while Windows is supported, there are still some bugs that need to be worked out
- Plugin system (plugins are written in Lua)
- Micro has a built-in plugin manager to automatically install, remove, and update all your plugins
- Persistent undo
- Automatic linting and error notifications
- Syntax highlighting (for over 90 languages!)
- Colorscheme support
- By default, micro comes with 16, 256, and true color themes.
- True color support (set the
MICRO_TRUECOLORenv variable to 1 to enable it) - Snippets
- The snippet plugin can be installed with
> plugin install snippets
- The snippet plugin can be installed with
- Copy and paste with the system clipboard
- Small and simple
- Easily configurable
- Macros
- Common editor things such as undo/redo, line numbers, Unicode support, softwrap...
Although not yet implemented, I hope to add more features such as autocompletion (#174) or a tree view (#249) in the future.
Installation
To install micro, you can download a prebuilt binary, or you can build it from source.
If you want more information about ways to install micro, see this wiki page.
Prebuilt binaries
All you need to install micro is one file, the binary itself. It's as simple as that!
Download the binary from the releases page.
On that page you'll see the nightly release, which contains binaries for micro which are built every night, and you'll see all the stable releases with the corresponding binaries.
If you'd like to see more information after installing micro, run micro -version.
Installation script
There is a great script which can install micro for you by downloading the latest prebuilt binary. You can find it at https://getmic.ro (the github repo for it is here).
Then you can easily install micro:
$ curl https://getmic.ro | bash
The script will install the micro binary to the current directory.
See the Github page for more information.
Package managers
You can install micro using Homebrew on Mac:
brew install micro
On Windows, you can install micro through Chocolatey or Scoop:
choco install micro
or
scoop install micro
On Linux, you can install micro through snap
snap install micro --classic
On OpenBSD, micro is available in the ports tree. It is also available as a binary package.
pkg_add -v micro
Building from source
If your operating system does not have a binary release, but does run Go, you can build from source.
Make sure that you have Go version 1.5 or greater (Go 1.4 will work if your version supports CGO) and that your GOPATH env variable is set (I recommend setting it to ~/go if you don't have one).
go get -d github.com/zyedidia/micro/cmd/micro
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/zyedidia/micro
make install
The binary will then be installed to $GOPATH/bin (or your $GOBIN).
Please make sure that when you are working with micro's code, you are working on your GOPATH.
You can install directly with go get (go get -u github.com/zyedidia/micro/cmd/micro) but this isn't recommended because it doesn't build micro with version information which is useful for the plugin manager.
MacOS terminal
If you are using MacOS, you should consider using iTerm2 instead of the default Mac terminal. The iTerm2 terminal has much better mouse support as well as better handling of key events. For best keybinding behavior, choose xterm defaults under Preferences->Profiles->Keys->Load Preset. The newest versions also support true color.
Linux clipboard support
On Linux, clipboard support requires the 'xclip' or 'xsel' commands to be installed.
For Ubuntu:
sudo apt-get install xclip
If you don't have xclip or xsel, micro will use an internal clipboard for copy and paste, but it won't work with external applications.
Colors and syntax highlighting
If you open micro and it doesn't seem like syntax highlighting is working, this is probably because
you are using a terminal which does not support 256 color. Try changing the colorscheme to simple
by pressing CtrlE in micro and typing set colorscheme simple.
If you are using the default Ubuntu terminal, to enable 256 make sure your TERM variable is set
to xterm-256color.
Many of the Windows terminals don't support more than 16 colors, which means
that micro's default colorscheme won't look very good. You can either set
the colorscheme to simple, or download a better terminal emulator, like
mintty.
Plan9, Cygwin
Please note that micro uses the amazing tcell library, but this means that micro is restricted to the platforms tcell supports. As a result, micro does not support Plan9, and Cygwin (although this may change in the future). Micro also doesn't support NaCl (but NaCl is deprecated anyways).
Usage
Once you have built the editor, simply start it by running micro path/to/file.txt or simply micro to open an empty buffer.
Micro also supports creating buffers from stdin:
ifconfig | micro
You can move the cursor around with the arrow keys and mouse.
You can also use the mouse to manipulate the text. Simply clicking and dragging will select text. You can also double click to enable word selection, and triple click to enable line selection.
Documentation and Help
Micro has a built-in help system which you can access by pressing Ctrl-E and typing help. Additionally, you can
view the help files here:
I also recommend reading the tutorial for a brief introduction to the more powerful configuration features micro offers.
Contributing
If you find any bugs, please report them! I am also happy to accept pull requests from anyone.
You can use the GitHub issue tracker to report bugs, ask questions, or suggest new features.
For a more informal setting to discuss the editor, you can join the Gitter chat.