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Kakoune
Table of Contents
TL;DR
Introduction
Features
Screenshots
Getting started
Building
Installing
Running
Basic Interaction
Selections
Normal Mode
Insert Mode
Movement
Appending
Using Counts
Disabling Hooks
Changes
Goto Commands
View commands
Marks
Jump list
Multi Selection
Object Selection
Commands
Basic Commands
Multiple commands
Configuration & Autoloading
Kakrc
Color Schemes
Options
Advanced topics
Faces
Registers
Macros
Search selection
Regex syntax
Exec and Eval
Insert mode completion
Escape to normal mode
Highlighters
Hooks
Key Mapping
Defining Commands and Aliases
FIFO Buffers
Credits
TL;DR
https://kakoune.org
Modal editor — Faster as in fewer keystrokes — Multiple selections — Orthogonal design
git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune.git
cd kakoune
make
./src/kak
See https://github.com/mawww/golf for Kakoune solutions to vimgolf challenges,
regularly beating the best Vim solution.
See the design document for more information on
Kakoune’s philosophy and design.
Introduction
Kakoune is a code editor that implements Vi’s "keystrokes as a text editing
language" model. As it is also a modal editor, it is somewhat similar to the
Vim editor (after which Kakoune was originally inspired).
Kakoune can operate in two modes: normal and insertion. In insertion mode,
keys are directly inserted into the current buffer. In normal mode, keys
are used to manipulate the current selection and to enter insertion mode.
Kakoune has a strong focus on interactivity. Most commands provide immediate
and incremental results, while being competitive with Vim in terms of keystroke count.
Kakoune works on selections, which are oriented, inclusive ranges of characters.
Selections have an anchor and a cursor. Most commands move both of
them except when extending selections, where the anchor character stays fixed
and the cursor moves around.
See https://vimeo.com/82711574
Join us on libera IRC #Kakoune
Features
Multiple selections as a central way of interacting
Powerful selection manipulation primitives
Select all regex matches in current selections
Keep selections containing/not containing a match for a given regex
Split current selections with a regex
Text objects (paragraph, sentence, nestable blocks)
Powerful text manipulation primitives
Align selections
Rotate selection contents
Case manipulation
Indentation
Piping each selection to external filter
Client-Server architecture
Multiple clients on the same editing session
Use tmux, zellij, kitty, wezterm or your X11/Wayland window manager to
manage splits/panes by spawning clients connected to the same session
Simple interaction with external programs
Automatic contextual help
Automatic as you type completion
Macros
Hooks
Syntax Highlighting
Supports multiple languages in the same buffer
Highlight a buffer differently in different windows
Screenshots
Figure 1. Kakoune in i3
Figure 2. Kakoune in tmux
Getting started
Building
Kakoune’s dependencies are:
A C++20 compliant compiler (GCC >= 10.3 or clang >= 11) along with its
associated C++ standard library (libstdc++ >= 10 or libc++)
To build, just type make in the root directory.
To generate man pages, type make man in the root directory.
Kakoune can be built on Linux, MacOS, and Cygwin. Due to Kakoune relying heavily
on being in a Unix-like environment, no native Windows version is planned.
Installing
In order to install kak on your system, rather than running it directly from
its source directory, type make install. You can specify the PREFIX and
DESTDIR if needed.
Tip
Homebrew (macOS) or Linuxbrew
brew install kakoune
Tip
MacPorts (macOS)
sudo port selfupdate
sudo port install kakoune
Tip
Fedora supported versions and Rawhide
dnf install kakoune
Tip
Fedora daily builds
Use the copr repository.
dnf copr enable jkonecny/kakoune
dnf install kakoune
Tip
RHEL/CentOS 8
Kakoune can be found in the EPEL8 repositories.
dnf install kakoune
Tip
Arch Linux
Kakoune is found in the repositories.
pacman -S kakoune
Tip
Gentoo
Kakoune is found in portage as
app-editors/kakoune.
emerge kakoune
Installation and Gentoo specific documentation is available.
Tip
Exherbo
cave resolve -x repository/mawww
cave resolve -x kakoune
Tip
openSUSE
Kakoune can be found in the repositories.
sudo zypper install kakoune
Tip
Ubuntu
Kakoune can be found in the Ubuntu repositories.
sudo apt install kakoune
If you want to compile from source on 20.04 or earlier, you must force the build to use GCC 10, which is not the default. Also, make sure you have .local/bin in your path so that kak is available after the installation.
git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune.git && cd kakoune/src
CXX=g++-10 make
make PREFIX=$HOME/.local install
Tip
Debian
Kakoune can be found in Debian 9 (Stretch) and later releases.
sudo apt install kakoune
Tip
FreeBSD
Kakoune is available in the official ports tree as
editors/kakoune.
A binary package is also available and can be installed with
pkg install kakoune
Tip
OpenBSD
Building on OpenBSD 6.7 amd64.
# pkg_add git gmake
# git clone https://github.com/mawww/kakoune
# cd kakoune
# export CXX=clang++
# gmake install
Kakoune is available in the 6.7-current port tree as
editors/kakoune
A binary package is also available for -current snapshot and can be installed with
# pkg_add kakoune
Running with support for plugins.
# pkg_add dash
$ export KAKOUNE_POSIX_SHELL=/usr/local/bin/dash
$ kak
Tip
Solus
Kakoune is available in the Solus stable repository.
It can be installed with
eopkg install kakoune
Tip
Void
Kakoune is available in the repositories.
It can be installed with
xbps-install -S kakoune
Tip
Term
Read the full README on GitHub