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NEO Emacs is GNU Emacs rewritten in Rust with a modern GPU display engine: the ~300,000-line C core is replaced by memory-safe Rust, aiming for 100% Emacs compatibility and 10x performance.
NEO Emacs is GNU Emacs rewritten in Rust with a modern GPU display engine: the ~300,000-line C core is replaced by memory-safe Rust, aiming for 100% Emacs compatibility and 10x performance.Is this a plugin for my current Emacs, or a whole separate editor I would install alongside it?A whole separate program, not an add-on: it is a hard fork of GNU Emacs whose Elisp tree is synced to emacs-31.1, with everything below the Lisp line rebuilt in Rust. You run it instead of your current Emacs.
A whole separate program, not an add-on: it is a hard fork of GNU Emacs whose Elisp tree is synced to emacs-31.1, with everything below the Lisp line rebuilt in Rust. You run it instead of your current Emacs.How do I get it on my machine?Grab a package from GitHub Releases: .deb/.rpm/tarball/AppImage on Linux, .dmg or .zip on macOS (Apple Silicon), an installer .exe or portable .zip on Windows. Docker images and a Cargo build from source also exist.
Grab a package from GitHub Releases: .deb/.rpm/tarball/AppImage on Linux, .dmg or .zip on macOS (Apple Silicon), an installer .exe or portable .zip on Windows. Docker images and a Cargo build from source also exist.Do I need to install Rust or any system libraries before it will run?Not for the prebuilt packages - they run as downloaded. On Linux the editor links the system GStreamer runtime for inline video, with codec plugins coming from the host; only building from source needs a Rust toolchain.
Not for the prebuilt packages - they run as downloaded. On Linux the editor links the system GStreamer runtime for inline video, with codec plugins coming from the host; only building from source needs a Rust toolchain.Can I already use it as my daily editor, or is it too rough for that?It is explicitly a work in progress: expect rough edges, breaking changes and missing features. macOS and Windows builds are experimental, and pieces like the zero-pause GC and multi-threaded Elisp are still maturing.
It is explicitly a work in progress: expect rough edges, breaking changes and missing features. macOS and Windows builds are experimental, and pieces like the zero-pause GC and multi-threaded Elisp are still maturing.Does it only run as a GUI app, or can I use it in a terminal too?Both come from the same binary: a GPU-rendered GUI window, or a TTY session via neomacs -nw. The TUI renderer is usable today and still being polished.
Both come from the same binary: a GPU-rendered GUI window, or a TTY session via neomacs -nw. The TUI renderer is usable today and still being polished.Does it need a powerful GPU, or will an ordinary laptop handle it?It renders through wgpu, which works over Vulkan, Metal, DirectX 12 or OpenGL, so integrated graphics is enough - and in TTY mode the GPU is not needed at all.
It renders through wgpu, which works over Vulkan, Metal, DirectX 12 or OpenGL, so integrated graphics is enough - and in TTY mode the GPU is not needed at all.Can it really show video, images and web pages inside a buffer?Yes - buffers can embed inline 4K video, GPU-decoded images, a WPE WebKit browser and a GPU terminal, with DMA-BUF zero-copy paths keeping the media on the GPU so the main thread never blocks.
Yes - buffers can embed inline 4K video, GPU-decoded images, a WPE WebKit browser and a GPU terminal, with DMA-BUF zero-copy paths keeping the media on the GPU so the main thread never blocks.Will my existing init.el, packages and keybindings keep working?That is the stated contract: the goal is 100% GNU Emacs compatibility, currently around 95% and closing. Every rewritten subsystem is diffed against GNU Emacs as a test oracle, and real configs like Doom Emacs serve as the daily test bed.
That is the stated contract: the goal is 100% GNU Emacs compatibility, currently around 95% and closing. Every rewritten subsystem is diffed against GNU Emacs as a test oracle, and real configs like Doom Emacs serve as the daily test bed.How deep can I customize it compared to stock Emacs?Deeper: in GNU Emacs hackability stops at the C display engine, while NEO Emacs opens the whole frontend to Elisp - down to render effects and GPU shaders written in WGSL.
Deeper: in GNU Emacs hackability stops at the C display engine, while NEO Emacs opens the whole frontend to Elisp - down to render effects and GPU shaders written in WGSL.Why rewrite Emacs in Rust instead of just using GNU Emacs?The author loves Emacs and wants to evolve it into 'the ultimate modern powerhouse': GPU rendering and a pure-Rust, memory-safe core today, with true multi-threaded Elisp and a zero-pause GC on the roadmap.
The author loves Emacs and wants to evolve it into 'the ultimate modern powerhouse': GPU rendering and a pure-Rust, memory-safe core today, with true multi-threaded Elisp and a zero-pause GC on the roadmap.Which topics is it in?lisp, wgpu, lambda, emacs, multithreading, neovim, text-editor, vim, rendering, gpu-acceleration, editor, tui
lisp, wgpu, lambda, emacs, multithreading, neovim, text-editor, vim, rendering, gpu-acceleration, editor, tui