Helix

Resources

Helix is a 'Post-Modern' modal text editor based on Neovim and Kakoune that is written in Rust. Helix comes with a builtin language server, multiple selections, and smart syntax highlighting.

Installation

USE flags

USE flags for app-editors/helix A post-modern text editor

`+grammar`	Build and install grammar language files
`debug`	Enable extra debug codepaths, like asserts and extra output. If you want to get meaningful backtraces see https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Quality_Assurance/Backtraces

Data provided by the Gentoo Package Database · Last update: 2024-09-21 05:31 More information about USE flags

Emerge

Note
This package is currently marked unstable so the unstable keyword must be accepted.

root #emerge --ask app-editors/helix

Configuration

Helix uses TOML for configuration, making the configuration much easier cleaner than comparable text editors. The configuration is stored at ~/.config/helix/config.toml.

The runtime directory is installed into /usr/share/helix/runtime, and needs to be linked to the configuration of the user accounts running helix:

user $ln -s /usr/share/helix/runtime ~/.config/helix/runtime

Usage

Helix can be started with hx:

user $hx

Themes

Helix already has a large amount of themes built-in. Setting the theme can be done during a session with :theme catppucin_latte or inside the configuration file

FILE ~/.config/helix/config.toml

theme = "catppuccin_frappe"

Language support

Helix support languages through LSP with several LSP already pre-configured.

You just need to install the server for the corresponding language by placing the executable in PATH. For example, marksman for markdown will allow to jump between heading. This package is not available yet on Gentoo but a binary can be found on Github.

Configuration can be done in languages.toml. For example, setting texlab with tectonic (both not yet packaged by Gentoo but easily installed):

FILE ~/.config/helix/languages.toml

[language-server]
texlab = {  command = "texlab",  config = {  texlab.build = {  executable = "tectonic",  args = ["-X", "compile", "%f", "--synctex", "--keep-logs", "--keep-intermediates" ] } } } , onSave  = true } }

}

Using a LSP in LaTeX allows for example to have a completion upon the bibliography with the \cite{} command.