neorex

# neorex

A Rex-Native Neovim frontend built in Zig.

One Neovim runs in the background behind all your panes, so buffers,
registers, undo and language servers are shared. `:split` and `:vsplit` open
real Rex panes where Neovim would put the window, and closing a pane in Rex
closes its window. Focusable floats, such as pickers, open in Rex floating
panes, along with any floats attached to them. The completion menu,
unfocusable floats like notifications, and statuslines are drawn inside the
pane they belong to.

![neorex demo](assets/demo.gif)

## Status

Very early and rough, bugs / missing features are to be expected.

AI has been used heavily in building neorex due to limits on my available time. A lot of the code needs large improvements, cleanup, better design etc. I will be doing this incrementally - any contributions are welcome.

## Requirements

- macOS or Linux
- [Rex](https://www.superlogical.com/rex), with its setting to auto-balance
  splits turned off. Otherwise Rex evens out every new split, so a sidebar
  such as neo-tree opens at half the window instead of its own width.
- A recent Neovim. It's developed against 0.13-dev; older versions may show
  no statuslines.
- Zig 0.17 to build from source

## Install

Download the latest release for your OS and architecture (macOS or Linux,
x86_64 or arm64):

```sh
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/alexrlocke/neorex/main/install.sh | sh
```

This puts neorex in `~/.local/share/neorex` and links it from
`~/.local/bin/neorex`. The colorscheme and lualine theme described below are
in `~/.local/share/neorex/runtime`. Or download a tarball from the
[releases page](https://github.com/alexrlocke/neorex/releases) yourself.

Release tarballs are signed with [minisign](https://jedisct1.github.io/minisign/).
The install script checks the signature when minisign is installed. To check
a tarball you downloaded yourself:

```sh
minisign -Vm neorex-aarch64-macos.tar.gz -P RWSx8dufrslQk2iEQLeMJnfJIR4h1mg8j6JDo9UBbyzcQIF4cjAA6Z4w
```

### Nix

The flake builds neorex from source for Linux and Apple Silicon Macs:

```sh
nix run github:alexrlocke/neorex             # try it
nix profile install github:alexrlocke/neorex # install it
```

Or add it as a flake input:

```nix
inputs.neorex = {
  url = "github:alexrlocke/neorex";
  inputs.nixpkgs.follows = "nixpkgs"; # reuse your nixpkgs instead of a second copy
};
```

then either use
`inputs.neorex.packages.${pkgs.stdenv.hostPlatform.system}.default`, or add
`inputs.neorex.overlays.default` to your nixpkgs overlays and use
`pkgs.neorex`.

The colorscheme and lualine theme are in the package's
`share/neorex/runtime`. neorex uses the `nvim` on your `PATH`.

## Build from source

```sh
zig build
zig build test
zig build test -Dgolden   # also the golden tests; downloads Ghostty once
```

The golden tests check every frame neorex draws against
[Ghostty](https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty)'s terminal emulator, pinned
to one commit.

Run it in a Rex pane,