cdin v0.1.0-beta.1

[0.1.0-beta.1] — 2025-12-27

This is the first public release. It's a beta: the core editor is functional and usable day-to-day, but some things are still rough. APIs may change, a few documented features are stubs, and there are almost certainly bugs. Bug reports and patches are welcome.

Core editor

• Windowed editor built on SDL3, with a custom title bar drawn entirely in Lua. No OS window decorations — cdin draws its own minimize/maximize/close buttons and handles the drag region via SDL's hit-test API.
• Custom renderer backed by stb_truetype. Three bundled fonts: a proportional UI font, a monospace editor font, and an icon font.
• Event loop running at a configurable FPS (default 60), with coroutine-based background threads for project scanning and similar tasks.
• Document model with unlimited undo/redo (configurable cap, default 10,000 steps) and undo merging for consecutive edits within a short time window.
• Project file scanner runs in a background thread and rescans every 5 seconds. Respects config.ignore_files (default: dot files).
• Files dropped onto the window open as new documents. Directories dropped open a new editor instance.
• Unsaved-changes dialog on quit.
• On crash, dirty documents are saved to <filename>~ and a stack trace is written to error.txt.

Vim mode

• Modal editing with three modes: Normal, Insert, Visual.
• Every buffer opens in Normal mode by default.
• Current mode shown in the status bar as [NORMAL], [INSERT], or [VISUAL].
• Motions in Normal and Visual mode: h j k l, w b e, 0, $ (via shift+4), ^ (via shift+6), gg, G.
• Operators: d, dd, D, yy, cc, x, p, u (undo), r (redo).
• Mode transitions: i, a, o, I, A, O, v, Escape.
• Tab in Normal mode cycles to the next open tab.
• Ex command line opened with : (or shift+;).
• Ex command history navigable with Up/Down while the command line is open.
• Pending-key timeout of 600 ms for two-key sequences like gg and dd.

Ex commands

:w, :w!, :wa — save current file / save all
:q, :q!, :qa, :qa! — close / force-close / quit
:wq, :x, :wqa, :xa — save-then-close variants
:e <path>, :edit <path> — open file
:new <path> — create and open a new file
:mkdir <path> — create directory tree
:rm <path>, :delete <path> — remove file or directory
:rename <old> <new>, :copy <src> <dst>, :move <src> <dst> — file operations
:ls [path] — list directory in a scratch buffer
:pwd — print working directory
:cd <path> — change working directory
:<number> — go to line
:!<cmd> — run shell command; output appears in a new scratch buffer
:tree — focus/toggle the project tree
:help — show ex command reference in a scratch buffer

File-path arguments to :e, :new, :mkdir, :rm, :rename, :copy, :move, :cd support tab-completion.

File manager menu (m)

Pressing m in Normal mode (or via vim-fmenu:open) opens a context-sensitive action menu. The available actions depend on where focus is:

• When the tree view is focused on a file: rename, delete, copy, move, open in editor, run shell command on it.
• When the tree view is focused on a directory: new file, new directory, rename, delete, run shell command.
• When a document is active: actions apply to that document's file.

Standard keybindings (non-vim)

The full default keymap is documented in Command Reference. Highlights:

Ctrl+Shift+P — command palette
Ctrl+P — fuzzy open file from project
Ctrl+O — open file by path
Ctrl+N — new document
Ctrl+S / Ctrl+Shift+S — save / save as
Ctrl+F / Ctrl+R — find / replace
Ctrl+G — go to line
Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y — undo / redo
Alt+1–9 — switch to tab by index

Plugins (bundled)

• treeview — project tree panel. Shows git status markers (A/M/D/?) when config.treeview_git_enabled is true. Polls every 2 seconds by default. Toggle hidden files with Ctrl+Shift+H or via config.show_hidden_files.
• autocomplete — word completion from all open documents. Shows up to 6 suggestions by default (config.autocomplete_max_suggestions).
• projectsearch — search across all project files; results open in a dedicated view.
• autoreload — detects when a file is changed on disk by another process and offers to reload it.
• trimwhitespace — strips trailing whitespace from every line on save. Runs automatically; no configuration needed.

Build system

• make / make build — release build
• make debug — debug build (-O0 -g3)
• make run — build and run
• make install — install to PREFIX (default /usr/local)
• make clean / make distclean
• make info — print build configuration summary
• Version is derived from the nearest git tag; falls back to 0.0.0+<commit>.
• Supports SDL3 (required) and Lua 5.3 or 5.4 (auto-detected via pkg-config).
• Linux, macOS, and Windows (MinGW) are all supported platforms.

Known issues and limitations

• The docs/guides/ directory in the repository contains stubs for several planned guides (configuration, plugin development, vim keybindings, API reference). This release ships those documents.
• No plugin package manager. Plugins are installed by dropping Lua files into data/plugins/.
• The Windows build requires manual SDL3 setup (see Building from Source).
• No LSP integration yet.
• No multiple cursors.
• Visual mode only supports character-wise selection. Line-wise and block-wise visual modes are not implemented.

---

---

Installation

Linux (x86_64)

tar xzf cdin-v0.1.0-beta.1-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
cd cdin-v0.1.0-beta.1-linux-x86_64
bash install.sh                         # → ~/.local  (no sudo)
# or system-wide:
sudo bash install.sh --prefix=/usr/local

SDL3 runtime — needed at runtime if not already installed:

• Ubuntu 24.04+: sudo apt install libsdl3-0
• Other distros: see SDL3 releases

Windows (x86_64)

1. Download cdin-v0.1.0-beta.1-windows-x86_64.zip and extract it.
2. Open PowerShell inside the extracted folder and run:

.\install.ps1
# Optional:
.\install.ps1 -RegisterFileTypes   # set as default for text/code files
.\install.ps1 -Prefix C:\Tools\cdin # custom location

The installer copies cdin.exe, SDL3.dll, and the Lua DLL into
%LOCALAPPDATA%\cdin\bin and adds that folder to your user PATH.

---

Contributors

• @rxi
• @m-mdy-m
• @inad9300
• @dslul
• @waywardmonkeys
• @6r1d
• @cptx032
• @extrowerk
• @luveti
• @takase1121