Eovim is the Enlightened Neovim. That's just an EFL GUI client for Neovim.

Status

Eovim is still in development, but it is stable enough to be used for your daily programming.

Screenshots

Have a look at the Enlightenment Wiki for more.

Why Eovim?

Eovim is written in plain C, with the amazing EFL. You have great added value to the text-only neovim with a minimal runtime overhead. No need to spawn a web browser to use it! If you don't like the externalized UI, it can be turned off, or changed via themes. Eovim also provides its own plugin system, so the UI can be modified directly from neovim.

Have a problem/question/suggestion? Feel free to open an issue. Join the club!

Installation

Eovim requires the following components to be installed on your system before you can start hacking around:

• EFL: this framework of libraries is packaged in most of the GNU/Linux distributions and on macOS. Do not forget to install the efl-devel package which provides Eina among others.
• msgpack-c: this serialization library is not widely packaged, but is mandatory to communicate with Neovim. You are advised to run the script scripts/get-msgpack.sh to install msgpack. This will retrieve and compile a static version of msgpack that eovim can work with.
• Neovim version 0.2.0 or greater (earlier versions have not been tested),
• CMake.

If you are unsure what packages shall be installed, you can run the following helper script from the top source directory. It will tell you how to setup your environment to compile Eovim from sources.

./scripts/setup.py

After making sure you have installed the dependencies aforementioned, run the following installation procedure:

mkdir -p build && cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release ..
cmake --build .
cmake --build . --target install # Possibly as root (i.e. via sudo)
ldconfig # On Linux only, possibly as root (i.e. via sudo)

If we want to run eovim without installing it, please refer to the Hacking section.

Note that unless -DWITH_OPTIONS=OFF is passed to cmake, eovim will install libraries. Hence, the need to run ldconfig after installing Eovim. Libraries are by default installed in the prefix directory passed to cmake (by default /usr/local) in a subdirectory that can be either lib32/, lib64/ or lib/ dependending on how the target architecture is detected. This subdirectory can be forced by passing -DLIB_INSTALL_DIR=alteratnate-lib-dir to cmake.

Usage

eovim [options] [files...]

Eovim command-line usage is exactly the same than what Vim or Neovim provides. You can run eovim --help or man eovim to get more help about how to use its command-line form. It basically adds options on top the ones provided by Neovim. If a command is not understood by Eovim itself, it will be passed to Neovim.

The man page will give you greater details, and especially will give information about the Vim Runtime modifications that are operated by Eovim.

When eovim starts, it spawns an instance of Neovim. If it happens that nvim is not in your PATH or if you want to use an alterate binary of Neovim, you can feed it to eovim with the option --nvim.

Plug-Ins

Eovim supports plug-ins! They allow Eovim to respond to events from Neovim, and as such to make Neovim freely manipulate the native graphical user interface provided by Eovim. Details about plug-ins and how the built-in plug-ins work can be read in the README contained in the plugins/ directory.

Vim Runtime

Eovim adds its own overlay to Vim's runtime. It resides in data/vim/runtime.vim, and is installed with Eovim. It is sourced when Eovim starts. See the manual for details.

Additionnally, ~/.config/nvim/eovimrc.nvim (can be overriden via the command-line option -C or via the GUI configuration) is sourced at eovim' startup, so eovim-specific initialization code can be written there.

Caps Lock handling

Eovim detects when Caps Lock are on and off. The default theme can display a visual hint if enabled. Neovim is also made aware of the toggling of Caps Lock via an autocmd. To add hooks in response to caps lock events, you must override the EovimCapsLock augroup:

:augroup EovimCapsLock
:   autocmd!
:   autocmd User EovimCapsLockOn <your handle when Caps Lock is ON>
:   autocmd User EovimCapsLockOff <your handle when Caps Lock is OFF>
:augroup END

Hacking

Eovim uses some environment variables that can influence its runtime. Some are directly inherited from the EFL framework, others are eovim-specific:

• EINA_LOG_BACKTRACE set it to an integer to get run-time backtraces.
• EINA_LOG_LEVELS set it to "eovim:INT" where INT is the log level.
• EOVIM_IN_TREE set it to non-zero to load files from the build directory instead of the installation directory.

To develop/debug, a typical use is to run eovim like this (from the build directory):

env EOVIM_IN_TREE=1 EINA_LOG_BACKTRACE=0 EINA_LOG_LEVELS="eovim:3" ./eovim

Tests

Tests are disabled by default, but can be enabled by passing -DWITH_TESTS=ON. Beware, tests require additional setup and dependencies:

• run scripts/get-test-data.sh from the top source directory,
• make sure you have Exactness installed,
• after building, you should install eovim as well.

Running make test will run the test suite. Details about how the tests work are explained in tests/README.md.

License

Eovim is MIT-licensed. See the LICENSE file for details. Files in data/themes/img have been taken from terminology or the EFL and are not original creations. Portions of the Eovim logo have been borrowed from the original Neovim logo. Eovim's logo should be understood as a tribute to Neovim.