"I started Neomacs because I love Emacs, I respect Emacs, and I want to evolve the legendary Emacs into the ultimate modern powerhouse." — Eval Exec
✨ "While other editors can save your files, only Emacs can save your soul." ✨
Emacs, rewritten in Rust — unleashed on the GPU, fixing what 40 years of C never could.
Built for 100% compatibility with the Emacs ecosystem you already have — your config, your packages, your muscle memory.
NEO Emacs keeps everything that makes Emacs Emacs — your init.el, your packages, your
muscle memory — and rebuilds the machinery underneath: the display engine runs on the
GPU, and the ~300,000-line C core is reimplemented in Rust. GNU Emacs itself serves as
the test oracle, so every rewritten subsystem is verified to behave identically.
(Why rewrite Emacs?)
[!IMPORTANT]
NEO Emacs is a work in progress. Expect rough edges, breaking changes, and missing
features — bug reports are very welcome.
[!NOTE]
NEO Emacs is a hard fork of GNU Emacs (Lisp tree synced to emacs-31.1). The C core
has been fully replaced by Rust. Fork provenance and rationale: FAQ.
Inline 4K Images — GPU-decoded, won't block the Emacs main thread
Inline Web Browser (WPE WebKit) — GPU backend, DMA-BUF zero-copy
Inline Terminal (Alacritty) — GPU-backed terminal embedded in a buffer
GPU Text with Rounded Box Faces
Highlights
GPU display engine — text, images, and effects rendered via wgpu
(Vulkan · Metal · DX12 · GL); ~4,000 lines of Rust replace ~50,000 lines of xdisp.c
Rich media in buffers — inline 4K video (typed Rust GStreamer + VA-API
integration on Linux), GPU-decoded images, a WPE WebKit browser, and a GPU terminal;
DMA-BUF paths stay on the GPU, with typed fallbacks where native interop is unavailable
Animations everywhere — 8 cursor modes, 21 scroll effects, 10 buffer
transitions at display refresh rate, all configurable from Elisp
(full catalog)
Hackable below the Lisp line — in GNU Emacs, hackability ends where the C
display engine begins; NEO Emacs opens the whole frontend to Elisp, from render
effects down to GPU shaders (WGSL) — hack the pixels, not just the text
Compatibility as the contract — your init.el, packages, and muscle memory;
every rewritten subsystem is diffed against GNU Emacs as a test oracle, and
real-world configs like Doom Emacs are the daily test bed
Pure-Rust core — no C left: the Elisp evaluator, bytecode VM, GC, portable
dump, and editor internals are all memory-safe, modern Rust
GUI or terminal — the same binary renders on the GPU or in a TTY (neomacs -nw)
What's next — true multi-threaded Elisp and a concurrent zero-pause GC
(status)
Install
Prefer system packages? Download them from
Releases:
On Windows, launch runneomacs.exe for the GUI without a console window.
Installer shortcuts use this launcher. Use neomacs.exe from a terminal for
-nw, --batch, redirected output, and shell exit status.
The Linux product links the system GStreamer runtime and provides video. Every
Linux artifact carries it: the .deb and .rpm declare the dependency, and the
AppImage bundles that closure, though codec plugin families still come from the
host.
The .rpm is built inside an el9 container, so it installs on RHEL 9, Rocky,
Alma and Fedora 43+ — a package built on Ubuntu cannot, because rpmbuild
records the build host's ncurses and glibc symbol versions as requirements. See
releasing-linux.md.
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/eval-exec/neomacs && cd neomacs
# Optional (recommended): repo dev shell with all dependencies
nix develop --accept-flake-config
# Compiles Rust, bootstraps Elisp, generates the portable dump
cargo xtask fresh-build --release
./target/release/neomacs
Run Cargo commands from within the checkout (normally its root). Cargo discovers
.cargo/config.toml from the invocation directory; Neomacs uses that config to
provide member crates with the repository root for shared Lisp and test assets.
Platform dependencies (Arch, macOS, Nix/Cachix) and the test suites:
docs/building.md.
NEO Emacs is a long-term project that takes significant ongoing work to build, test, and
maintain. If NEO Emacs is useful or exciting to you, please consider supporting its
development on:
Eval Exec's YouTube channel
NEO Emacs 是用 Rust 重写的 GNU Emacs,配备现代 GPU 显示引擎:约 30 万行的 C 语言核心被内存安全的 Rust 所取代,目标是 100% 兼容 Emacs,性能提升 10 倍。