6 ms·

Hey! Engineer at Zed here. Linux port is on our roadmap. Hopefully we'll get it done this year!

by misternugget 3y ago

shortrounddev2 3y ago
What about Windows?
- misternugget 3y ago
  I think that is on the roadmap too, but possibly further down.
  - archon810 3y ago
    Is there some place I can subscribe to the Windows release notification?
    - JellyBeanThief 3y ago
      Possibly https://www.google.com/alerts https://www.google.com/alerts?
    - c0balt 3y ago
      Maybe the tracking issue for Windows support: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394
  - shortrounddev2 3y ago
    You know Windows is the most common development platform? If it were me I'd prioritize it
    - mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
      The Zed team disagrees. Here is what they say in the github discussion on the issue: (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394) "We will let you know when windows support is under development. The Zed team isn't taking feedback on when we start on windows support, nor why we didn't start with windows. The amount of people on each platform isn't relevant, as it starts with the base assumption that more people = better to the Zed team. Growth driven development unlikely to lead to a resilient, high quality product long term."
      - Rapzid 3y ago
        Haha, well they will get lots of feedback they don't want to take. A company like Jetbrains can do this to an extent due to existing products fueling long term R&D efforts before they bare fruit. Interested to see how this outlook holds up as the runway burns and investor pressure increases from that cool 12.5m they raised last year.
        9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
        From what I can find, the used OS of software developers is 61% windows, 46% Mac so this argument has no weight on the considerations the team should make Å— it’s essentially a toss up. Even if it weren’t a toss up and significantly more devs used windows, deciding to target windows based solely on OS market share is one of the worst things a small dev team with finite resources could do. It’s just not a compelling argument at all.
      - PoignardAzur 3y ago
        Gotta respect that they know what they want.
    - Shorel 3y ago
      Even when I am forced to use Windows, I develop on Ubuntu inside a Virtual Machine. About 80% of the developers at my company do the same. Only a few are happy with just Windows. So, I would prefer if they prioritize Linux and leave Windows as the last one.
    - 9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
      It is, but barely (windows is @ 61%, macOS is at 46% based on the numbers I found). And even if we ignore that, number of potential users is far from the only factor you’d consider when choosing the first platform to target for a new project. And then, ignoring that as well, just because an OS has more potential users in total, that doesn’t mean it has more potential users of your editor. There’s lots of reasons to not choose windows as a first release platform, and it being ‘the most common development platform’ isn’t a compelling one, especially for a small team with finite resources.
    - olingern 3y ago
      I think linux + osx combined is probably developer majority. I'm assuming most Windows development is .NET or Unity based. Over the past nine years, I've worked primarily with Node, Ruby, and a smidgen of Java and no employer has issued Windows machine. It's in sharp contrast with the start of my career where I was in VB6 and C# where I only worked with Windows environments. Could be confirmation bias, though.
      - shortrounddev2 3y ago
        Windows is a great platform for developing any language or platform, not just .Net. Personally I think it blows macOS and its dated tools out of the water in any category https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t... Stackoverflow found that Linux and macOS is the slight majority for professional use and the minority for personal use with developers (with the caveat that the total professional use of all categories is >100%)
        alemanek 3y ago
        Just curious what tools are you missing on MacOS or Linux that are found on Windows? I have been on MacOS the last 8 years or so but before that was all Windows and Linux. I prefer MacOS now but curious what I am missing. My colleagues that are using Windows machines all use WSL with dev containers so really just using Linux under the hood. My experience is that pretty much everything is cross platform these days. I don’t do .Net or game dev though. Just Go, Java and some NodeJS these days.
        Rapzid 3y ago
        > so really just using Linux under the hood Yeah, but with Windows GUI along with fractional scaling, device, and etc support haha. I've developed on both bare Linux and for years in Linux VMs. Saying Windows+WSL is "really just linux under the hood" does this setup a massive disservice. It makes me smile every time I type WSL into the terminal lol.
kvark 3y ago
How are you planning to tackle the GPU API differences?
- 1propionyl 3y ago
  (Not OP) These days that's a lot less of a concern than it used to be. It is a lot of up-front work to facade e.g. Metal, Vulkan (and even D3D12) but it's much much much easier than back in OpenGL vs D3D9/10 days. Most of the general concepts are more or less the same across them all these days. The "shapes" of the APIs are very similar. A texture is a texture is a texture. Same for a vertex/index/uniform buffer, vertex/fragment/compute shaders (notably not geometry, but you can just use compute), etc.
  - 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
    I'm not in the graphics world at all, but I read this lively discussion last week (post [0], discussion [1]) that made me think the situation was pretty messy. Is it maybe not as bad as that makes it appear? [0] https://www.carette.xyz/posts/we_are_doomed/ https://www.carette.xyz/posts/we_are_doomed/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994780
    - raphlinus 3y ago
      I'd recommend wgpu. It should be a fairly easy migration from Metal, as Apple has been actively involved in the design, and there are similar concerns for developer experience (unlike, say, Vulkan). Unfortunately, graphics is in many ways the easy part. Really excellent integration with system menus, preferences, keyboard, input method editing, all have more variation across platforms and a still-evolving story of solid Rust abstractions. Lately, we've decided to try joining forces with the winit project to see if we can get those problems solved well.
LoganDark 3y ago
Is there any way to make it compatible with macOS 10.14? Your minimum macOS requirement is literally just one release away from what I have!
- hav 3y ago
  I'm running it just fine on 10.14.
  - LoganDark 3y ago
    During the closed beta, the requirements said the minimum was 10.15, and I tried to download it and run it anyway and it wouldn't run. Did you have to build it from source?
    - hav 3y ago
      I have to apologise and backtrack here. I was under the impression that "Sonoma" was in fact 10.14 but it's just 14. 10.14 was "Mojave".
cpuguy83 3y ago
Since you are here I'll hijack the thread :) What about remote support ala vscode-server over SSH.
- c-c-c-c-c 3y ago
  Please not ala vscode-server over SSH. Do it proper like emacs tramp so it will connect to any platforms/architectures.
  - Shish2k 3y ago
    “Please don’t do it like a 4x4 truck, do it proper, like a bicycle” — there is some overlap between those things, but for people who are actually making full use of the former, the latter is not a useful suggestion
    - klyrs 3y ago
      I'd suggest that the people who make "full use" of vsc-over-ssh are satisfied with vscode, so it would be unwise to target the full featureset. More generally, targeting another project's complete featureset is often a great way to get mired down in the wrong details. Unless you can afford to do a proper cleanroom -- then, you'll be able to at least match the performance and useful abstractions used in the original.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - rand_flip_bit 3y ago
        > I'd suggest that the people who make "full use" of vsc-over-ssh are satisfied with vscode, so it would be unwise to target the full featureset. Remote SSH + Dev Containers and their seamless integration (even stacking one on the other) are the only features that keep me using VS Code. I would love to see the full implementation of these in an editor as fast and light weight as Zed.
awill 3y ago
Excellent. A big reason I use Sublime is because it's cross platform (Mac at work, Linux at home).
gtirloni 3y ago
What kind of help do you need to make this happen?
- mdaniel 3y ago
  I was curious myself what the hurdle is and so I checked out the latest tag and followed along with https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/.github/workflows/ci.yml https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/.github... and it went ok except for building https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/tree/v0.119.18/crates/gpui https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/tree/v0.119.18/crates/... which puked because https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/crates/gpui/src/platform.rs#L3 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/crates/... is the only one so, my strong suspicion is that porting gpui is the long pole, since it is apparently just going to do its own gui toolkit
rmrf100 3y ago
Great! waiting for it!
bryango 3y ago
Hey! Thank you for this cool editor! However, has it been written with cross-platform support in mind? Otherwise, porting from mac to linux could be rather painful and time-consuming... Will there be an ETA for us linux users? I saw it on the roadmap [0] but without an ETA. [0] https://zed.dev/roadmap https://zed.dev/roadmap
- jhasse 3y ago
  > However, has it been written with cross-platform support in mind? Nope, it's using Apple's proprietary Metal API.
WillAdams 3y ago
Will you be using GNUstep for the port?
- Klonoar 3y ago
  Nobody wants to use GNUStep in 2024. Their UI framework is also rendering via the GPU, so it's more likely they'd wrap it in a GTK/Qt/whatever window and then just render accordingly. You don't need GNUStep for it since there's little "mac"-isms you need to cover.

Hey! Engineer at Zed here. Linux port is on our roadmap. Hopefully we'll get it done this year!

shortrounddev2 3y ago

What about Windows?

misternugget 3y ago
I think that is on the roadmap too, but possibly further down.
- archon810 3y ago
  Is there some place I can subscribe to the Windows release notification?
  - JellyBeanThief 3y ago
    Possibly https://www.google.com/alerts https://www.google.com/alerts?
  - c0balt 3y ago
    Maybe the tracking issue for Windows support: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394
- shortrounddev2 3y ago
  You know Windows is the most common development platform? If it were me I'd prioritize it
  - mrgoldenbrown 3y ago
    The Zed team disagrees. Here is what they say in the github discussion on the issue: (https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/issues/5394) "We will let you know when windows support is under development. The Zed team isn't taking feedback on when we start on windows support, nor why we didn't start with windows. The amount of people on each platform isn't relevant, as it starts with the base assumption that more people = better to the Zed team. Growth driven development unlikely to lead to a resilient, high quality product long term."
    - Rapzid 3y ago
      Haha, well they will get lots of feedback they don't want to take. A company like Jetbrains can do this to an extent due to existing products fueling long term R&D efforts before they bare fruit. Interested to see how this outlook holds up as the runway burns and investor pressure increases from that cool 12.5m they raised last year.
      - 9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
        From what I can find, the used OS of software developers is 61% windows, 46% Mac so this argument has no weight on the considerations the team should make Å— it’s essentially a toss up. Even if it weren’t a toss up and significantly more devs used windows, deciding to target windows based solely on OS market share is one of the worst things a small dev team with finite resources could do. It’s just not a compelling argument at all.
    - PoignardAzur 3y ago
      Gotta respect that they know what they want.
  - Shorel 3y ago
    Even when I am forced to use Windows, I develop on Ubuntu inside a Virtual Machine. About 80% of the developers at my company do the same. Only a few are happy with just Windows. So, I would prefer if they prioritize Linux and leave Windows as the last one.
  - 9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
    It is, but barely (windows is @ 61%, macOS is at 46% based on the numbers I found). And even if we ignore that, number of potential users is far from the only factor you’d consider when choosing the first platform to target for a new project. And then, ignoring that as well, just because an OS has more potential users in total, that doesn’t mean it has more potential users of your editor. There’s lots of reasons to not choose windows as a first release platform, and it being ‘the most common development platform’ isn’t a compelling one, especially for a small team with finite resources.
  - olingern 3y ago
    I think linux + osx combined is probably developer majority. I'm assuming most Windows development is .NET or Unity based. Over the past nine years, I've worked primarily with Node, Ruby, and a smidgen of Java and no employer has issued Windows machine. It's in sharp contrast with the start of my career where I was in VB6 and C# where I only worked with Windows environments. Could be confirmation bias, though.
    - shortrounddev2 3y ago
      Windows is a great platform for developing any language or platform, not just .Net. Personally I think it blows macOS and its dated tools out of the water in any category https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-technologies-operating-system https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-most-popular-t... Stackoverflow found that Linux and macOS is the slight majority for professional use and the minority for personal use with developers (with the caveat that the total professional use of all categories is >100%)
      - alemanek 3y ago
        Just curious what tools are you missing on MacOS or Linux that are found on Windows? I have been on MacOS the last 8 years or so but before that was all Windows and Linux. I prefer MacOS now but curious what I am missing. My colleagues that are using Windows machines all use WSL with dev containers so really just using Linux under the hood. My experience is that pretty much everything is cross platform these days. I don’t do .Net or game dev though. Just Go, Java and some NodeJS these days.
        Rapzid 3y ago
        > so really just using Linux under the hood Yeah, but with Windows GUI along with fractional scaling, device, and etc support haha. I've developed on both bare Linux and for years in Linux VMs. Saying Windows+WSL is "really just linux under the hood" does this setup a massive disservice. It makes me smile every time I type WSL into the terminal lol.

kvark 3y ago

How are you planning to tackle the GPU API differences?

1propionyl 3y ago
(Not OP) These days that's a lot less of a concern than it used to be. It is a lot of up-front work to facade e.g. Metal, Vulkan (and even D3D12) but it's much much much easier than back in OpenGL vs D3D9/10 days. Most of the general concepts are more or less the same across them all these days. The "shapes" of the APIs are very similar. A texture is a texture is a texture. Same for a vertex/index/uniform buffer, vertex/fragment/compute shaders (notably not geometry, but you can just use compute), etc.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
  I'm not in the graphics world at all, but I read this lively discussion last week (post [0], discussion [1]) that made me think the situation was pretty messy. Is it maybe not as bad as that makes it appear? [0] https://www.carette.xyz/posts/we_are_doomed/ https://www.carette.xyz/posts/we_are_doomed/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994780 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38994780
  - raphlinus 3y ago
    I'd recommend wgpu. It should be a fairly easy migration from Metal, as Apple has been actively involved in the design, and there are similar concerns for developer experience (unlike, say, Vulkan). Unfortunately, graphics is in many ways the easy part. Really excellent integration with system menus, preferences, keyboard, input method editing, all have more variation across platforms and a still-evolving story of solid Rust abstractions. Lately, we've decided to try joining forces with the winit project to see if we can get those problems solved well.

LoganDark 3y ago

Is there any way to make it compatible with macOS 10.14? Your minimum macOS requirement is literally just one release away from what I have!

hav 3y ago
I'm running it just fine on 10.14.
- LoganDark 3y ago
  During the closed beta, the requirements said the minimum was 10.15, and I tried to download it and run it anyway and it wouldn't run. Did you have to build it from source?
  - hav 3y ago
    I have to apologise and backtrack here. I was under the impression that "Sonoma" was in fact 10.14 but it's just 14. 10.14 was "Mojave".

cpuguy83 3y ago

Since you are here I'll hijack the thread :) What about remote support ala vscode-server over SSH.

c-c-c-c-c 3y ago
Please not ala vscode-server over SSH. Do it proper like emacs tramp so it will connect to any platforms/architectures.
- Shish2k 3y ago
  “Please don’t do it like a 4x4 truck, do it proper, like a bicycle” — there is some overlap between those things, but for people who are actually making full use of the former, the latter is not a useful suggestion
  - klyrs 3y ago
    I'd suggest that the people who make "full use" of vsc-over-ssh are satisfied with vscode, so it would be unwise to target the full featureset. More generally, targeting another project's complete featureset is often a great way to get mired down in the wrong details. Unless you can afford to do a proper cleanroom -- then, you'll be able to at least match the performance and useful abstractions used in the original.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - rand_flip_bit 3y ago
      > I'd suggest that the people who make "full use" of vsc-over-ssh are satisfied with vscode, so it would be unwise to target the full featureset. Remote SSH + Dev Containers and their seamless integration (even stacking one on the other) are the only features that keep me using VS Code. I would love to see the full implementation of these in an editor as fast and light weight as Zed.

awill 3y ago

Excellent. A big reason I use Sublime is because it's cross platform (Mac at work, Linux at home).

gtirloni 3y ago

What kind of help do you need to make this happen?

mdaniel 3y ago
I was curious myself what the hurdle is and so I checked out the latest tag and followed along with https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/.github/workflows/ci.yml https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/.github... and it went ok except for building https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/tree/v0.119.18/crates/gpui https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/tree/v0.119.18/crates/... which puked because https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/crates/gpui/src/platform.rs#L3 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/blob/v0.119.18/crates/... is the only one so, my strong suspicion is that porting gpui is the long pole, since it is apparently just going to do its own gui toolkit

rmrf100 3y ago

Great! waiting for it!

bryango 3y ago

Hey! Thank you for this cool editor! However, has it been written with cross-platform support in mind? Otherwise, porting from mac to linux could be rather painful and time-consuming... Will there be an ETA for us linux users? I saw it on the roadmap [0] but without an ETA. [0] https://zed.dev/roadmap https://zed.dev/roadmap

jhasse 3y ago
> However, has it been written with cross-platform support in mind? Nope, it's using Apple's proprietary Metal API.

WillAdams 3y ago

Will you be using GNUstep for the port?

Klonoar 3y ago
Nobody wants to use GNUStep in 2024. Their UI framework is also rendering via the GPU, so it's more likely they'd wrap it in a GTK/Qt/whatever window and then just render accordingly. You don't need GNUStep for it since there's little "mac"-isms you need to cover.