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When I tried Helix I was impressed by what I saw but had two problems with it: 1) I am used to Vim motions and Helix was just slightly different which was conf

When I tried Helix I was impressed by what I saw but had two problems with it: 1) I am used to Vim motions and Helix was just slightly different which was confusing. 2) No plugins. I have my Nvim heavily customized with many plugins and would not want to miss their functionality. This cannot all be provided by the core editor so I guess it won't be an option for me as long as they don't support user plugins.

xvilka 4y ago
Yes, just rewriting NeoVim in Rust would be a perfect solution.
- lordnaikon 4y ago
  Helix does not want to limit itself by what NeoVim is: > If Neovim is the modern Vim, then Helix is post-modern. /s
- efficax 4y ago
  why would you want to go and do a silly thing like that. what’s the benefit
  - jeremyjh 4y ago
    Making the front page of HN.
lordnaikon 4y ago
The ability to use plugins is no quality in itself. Even if Helix would support plugins tomorrow, it would not magically mean you could use the same (or equal) plugins from your vim experience – someone needs to write them. You can argue that the Helix Project is in its early stages but many of the features you get by crafting your vim config are running out of the box in Helix now. There will very likely be a time when Plugins are supported, but this time is not now. I like the approach to make first class integrated functionality rather than the mess we currently have in vim. Helix aims to have an out of the box experience that would take you hours or even days if you are fresh to vim. If you need functionality on top of it, plugins will come into play. There is a reason why astrovim, spacevim etc. are popular, people don't want to spend to much time configuring the most basics that everyone is expecting today. So if Helix does most of the things you need today i would encourage you to try it out and if it does not have a feature that you really need, plugins wouldn't help much either because somebody needs to write it in the first place and by the current userbase its very unlikely. It seems that most of the people are just gathering around the main project and make PR's directly which somewhat guarantees a certain amount of quality.
- efficax 4y ago
  i agree that the plug-in chaos of vim and even emacs is exhausting. there’s so much churn, abandoned packages, and all this decision making that you have to do to get started. but at the same time you can’t expect to be able to build all the functionality into the editor. my workflow is greatly simplified by using tpopes vim-fugitive, it’s a fantastic git interface and it makes total sense to be part of an editor, and the lack of a similar thing in helix was the first reason i went back to vim after trying it out. if helix had plug-ins i’d probably be implementing that functionality myself! there are tons of other things like that. sure i could start building a git interface into helix itself but that both seems like a failure to separate concerns and a possible waste of time if it gets rejected by the maintainer etc.
- fileeditview 4y ago
  As far as I remember they stated that plugins won't be supported back when I tried it. No idea if that has changed. Of course the plugins need to be written but my point is that they cannot be written at the time. I understand and support the idea of Helix to be useful out of the box for many use cases. However for me the editor in its current form is not sufficient. As I already stated I use many (wonderful) plugins in Neovim. I could not justify going away from the status quo because it is pretty good. I have my setup configured so the ease to jump into is not really a valid argument for me and I suspect for many more Vim users.
  - SoraNoTenshi 4y ago
    Helix will get plugin support sometime, it's basically a matter of when not if. Also; the scripting languages seems to become an S-Expression like lisp dialect.
  - lordnaikon 4y ago
    I get what you're saying. The problem is that it is not really a matter of if plugins are supported or not. Helix will have plugins in the future. There is work being done towards it – mainly design work right now and they try to figure out how to approach this best, writing "demos" etc. Plugin systems are not easy and they have a clear vision of how this should NOT end up working. In their current state putting in work into a Plugin-System does not make much sense (limited developer time that is better spend elsewhere) regarding their project goal. As i said you can argue that the project is in its infancy and does not work for you because of that. But the main reason is not the support or lack of plugins. As i said, even if there was a plugin system you could argue that there are no plugins available for the things you want – ending up at exactly the same point you're today. Having a Plugin-System does not magically makes hundred of useful plugins appear out of nowhere.
maherbeg 4y ago
What plugins do you miss in particular? I'd be curious how much of a delta it would be to getting to exactly what you needed.
- fileeditview 4y ago
  A bit late but here is a list of plugins I could not live without: - tpope/vim-fugitive - samoshkin/vim-mergetool - folke/zen-mode.nvim - kevinhwang91/rnvimr - nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim There might be more I am forgetting.. and maybe something like telescope is already part of Helix. I will check Helix again in a year ;)

xvilka 4y ago

Yes, just rewriting NeoVim in Rust would be a perfect solution.

lordnaikon 4y ago
Helix does not want to limit itself by what NeoVim is: > If Neovim is the modern Vim, then Helix is post-modern. /s
efficax 4y ago
why would you want to go and do a silly thing like that. what’s the benefit
- jeremyjh 4y ago
  Making the front page of HN.

lordnaikon 4y ago

The ability to use plugins is no quality in itself. Even if Helix would support plugins tomorrow, it would not magically mean you could use the same (or equal) plugins from your vim experience – someone needs to write them. You can argue that the Helix Project is in its early stages but many of the features you get by crafting your vim config are running out of the box in Helix now. There will very likely be a time when Plugins are supported, but this time is not now. I like the approach to make first class integrated functionality rather than the mess we currently have in vim. Helix aims to have an out of the box experience that would take you hours or even days if you are fresh to vim. If you need functionality on top of it, plugins will come into play. There is a reason why astrovim, spacevim etc. are popular, people don't want to spend to much time configuring the most basics that everyone is expecting today. So if Helix does most of the things you need today i would encourage you to try it out and if it does not have a feature that you really need, plugins wouldn't help much either because somebody needs to write it in the first place and by the current userbase its very unlikely. It seems that most of the people are just gathering around the main project and make PR's directly which somewhat guarantees a certain amount of quality.

efficax 4y ago
i agree that the plug-in chaos of vim and even emacs is exhausting. there’s so much churn, abandoned packages, and all this decision making that you have to do to get started. but at the same time you can’t expect to be able to build all the functionality into the editor. my workflow is greatly simplified by using tpopes vim-fugitive, it’s a fantastic git interface and it makes total sense to be part of an editor, and the lack of a similar thing in helix was the first reason i went back to vim after trying it out. if helix had plug-ins i’d probably be implementing that functionality myself! there are tons of other things like that. sure i could start building a git interface into helix itself but that both seems like a failure to separate concerns and a possible waste of time if it gets rejected by the maintainer etc.
fileeditview 4y ago
As far as I remember they stated that plugins won't be supported back when I tried it. No idea if that has changed. Of course the plugins need to be written but my point is that they cannot be written at the time. I understand and support the idea of Helix to be useful out of the box for many use cases. However for me the editor in its current form is not sufficient. As I already stated I use many (wonderful) plugins in Neovim. I could not justify going away from the status quo because it is pretty good. I have my setup configured so the ease to jump into is not really a valid argument for me and I suspect for many more Vim users.
- SoraNoTenshi 4y ago
  Helix will get plugin support sometime, it's basically a matter of when not if. Also; the scripting languages seems to become an S-Expression like lisp dialect.
- lordnaikon 4y ago
  I get what you're saying. The problem is that it is not really a matter of if plugins are supported or not. Helix will have plugins in the future. There is work being done towards it – mainly design work right now and they try to figure out how to approach this best, writing "demos" etc. Plugin systems are not easy and they have a clear vision of how this should NOT end up working. In their current state putting in work into a Plugin-System does not make much sense (limited developer time that is better spend elsewhere) regarding their project goal. As i said you can argue that the project is in its infancy and does not work for you because of that. But the main reason is not the support or lack of plugins. As i said, even if there was a plugin system you could argue that there are no plugins available for the things you want – ending up at exactly the same point you're today. Having a Plugin-System does not magically makes hundred of useful plugins appear out of nowhere.

maherbeg 4y ago

What plugins do you miss in particular? I'd be curious how much of a delta it would be to getting to exactly what you needed.

fileeditview 4y ago
A bit late but here is a list of plugins I could not live without: - tpope/vim-fugitive - samoshkin/vim-mergetool - folke/zen-mode.nvim - kevinhwang91/rnvimr - nvim-telescope/telescope.nvim There might be more I am forgetting.. and maybe something like telescope is already part of Helix. I will check Helix again in a year ;)