Warning

Volt is in early development and issues are to be expected. Please feel free to report bugs and issues in the Issues section.

---

volt is a greenfield native text editor project built in Rust. The long-term direction is an Emacs-inspired, 4coder-style editor with a Rust core, a compiled user extension library, and native rendering.

---

Workspace layout

• crates/volt - process entry point and startup bootstrap for the volt executable
• crates/editor-core - shared runtime and editor domain concepts
• crates/editor-buffer - text storage and editing engine
• crates/editor-render - rendering abstractions and viewport drawing
• crates/editor-sdl - SDL3 platform and windowing integration
• crates/editor-theme - theme token registry and palette resolution
• crates/editor-syntax - tree-sitter orchestration
• crates/editor-jobs - async jobs and compilation runners
• crates/editor-terminal - builtin terminal buffers
• crates/editor-lsp - language server integration
• crates/editor-dap - debug adapter integration
• crates/editor-git - magit-style git workflows
• crates/editor-fs - workspace file system services
• crates/editor-picker - fuzzy picker and list UI abstractions
• user/sdk - the only stable ABI crate shared between the host and the compiled user library
• crates/editor-plugin-host - plugin hosting and loading services
• user - compiled user extension library and packages
• xtask - developer automation commands

Developer commands

• cargo xtask fmt - format the workspace
• cargo xtask fmt-check - verify formatting in CI
• cargo xtask check - run cargo check --workspace
• cargo xtask clippy - run clippy with warnings denied
• cargo xtask test - run workspace tests
• cargo xtask ci - run formatting, check, clippy, and tests

Building locally

Build the Volt application

To build the editor binary in debug mode:

cargo build -p volt

For a release build:

cargo build -p volt --release

The executable is written to target/debug/volt or target/release/volt (volt.exe on Windows).

Build the user shared library

The compiled user customization layer lives in the volt-user crate and is built as both an rlib and a shared library.

To build it in debug mode:

cargo build -p volt-user

For a release build:

cargo build -p volt-user --release

The shared library is written next to the volt binary:

• Linux: target/<profile>/libuser.so
• macOS: target/<profile>/libuser.dylib
• Windows: target/<profile>/user.dll

Build both at the same time

cargo build -p volt -p volt-user

For a release build:

cargo build -p volt -p volt-user --release

Build the packaged local distribution

To build the local bundle layout used by releases, build both crates together:

cargo build -p volt -p volt-user --release

After that, target/release/ contains:

• volt / volt.exe
• the compiled user shared library
• assets/
• a copied user/ tree that can be rebuilt standalone

The volt binary now prefers the shared library that lives next to the executable, so the release-style rebuild workflow is:

1. build volt and volt-user
2. edit files under user/
3. rebuild just the user library with cargo build -p volt-user --release
4. replace the shared library next to volt

If you want to rebuild the copied standalone user tree that was staged into the release folder, you can also run:

cd target/release/user
cargo build --release -p volt-user

You can also point the binary at a specific user library with VOLT_USER_LIBRARY=/path/to/libuser.so (or the platform equivalent file name).

Linux native dependencies

On Linux, building the SDL/browser-enabled application requires the GTK/WebKit development packages used in CI. If you hit pkg-config errors for glib-2.0, gtk, or webkit2gtk, install the same packages as the release workflow, for example:

sudo apt-get install -y pkg-config libgtk-3-dev libwebkit2gtk-4.1-dev

Current status

The repository now has a validated multi-crate foundation that covers the major architecture slices requested for the editor:

• a Cargo workspace with xtask automation and CI wiring
• an editor-core runtime with the Window -> Workspace -> Pane/Popup -> Buffer model
• service, command, hook, and keymap registries
• an abi_stable-shaped compiled user library with auto-loaded packages
• an SDL3 shell demo using SDL_ttf (FreeType-backed) with split panes, auto-loaded user/* packages, Vim-style defaults, searchable pickers, user-defined statusline segments, workspace management, and the current SDL canvas renderer
• a rope-backed editor-buffer engine with cursor movement, range edits, undo/redo, streaming file reads, and large-buffer coverage
• an editor-picker fuzzy list engine used by the command palette flow
• editor-jobs and editor-terminal foundations for async command execution, compile-style runs, and terminal transcripts
• editor-lsp and editor-dap registries for Rust server/adapter session plans
• an editor-syntax registry with tree-sitter language registration and Rust capture-to-theme-token mappings from user/lang/rust.rs
• an editor-theme registry with themes loaded from user/themes/*.toml
• editor-fs and editor-git models for oil-style directory buffers and magit-style status parsing
• the SDL shell prefers a system-installed Berkeley Mono Nerd Font when present, with cross-platform monospace fallbacks otherwise, and now always loads the bundled icon fonts from crates/volt/assets/font

You can run the current shell and bootstrap demos with:

cargo run -p volt

cargo run -p volt -- --shell-demo

cargo run -p volt -- --shell-hidden

cargo run -p volt -- --profile-typing

cargo run -p volt -- --bootstrap-demo

The default launch path opens the visible SDL3 shell on the stable SDL canvas path. The hidden smoke-test path prints the selected backend/renderer so you can verify shell startup. --profile-typing keeps per-frame input timing samples in memory and writes a typing profile log on exit so you can inspect which stages are slow while typing. The bootstrap demo prints a startup summary showing the currently wired picker, job, terminal, LSP, DAP, theme, directory, git, and syntax subsystems.

Inside the SDL shell, the default user package wiring now gives you:

• Vim-style normal/insert mode controls from user/vim.rs
• : and F3 for the command picker
• F4 for the buffer picker
• F5 to toggle the docked popup window
• F6 for a searchable keybinding picker
• F7 for the theme picker
• Ctrl-n, Ctrl-p, and Enter to navigate and run picker entries
• a per-buffer statusline composed from user/statusline.rs
• workspace.new, workspace.switch, workspace.delete, and workspace.list-files commands backed by user/workspace.rs

Theme files live under user/themes/*.toml and support UI options like font, font size, and cursor/picker roundness. Bundled icon fonts are loaded automatically at startup and are no longer