TextMate

About this fork

I ❤️ TextMate.

I have been using it almost everyday since I bought it (way back in I think 2008?) and while many friends and colleagues moved on to Sublime, then Atom then VS Code etc. I stayed with TextMate. I just like TextMate. Even with its many quirks over the last few years, I stuck with it -- it is a trusted ally. I still think when it comes to editing, it has features that many folks fail to appreciate.

I have always wanted to contribute and help get it back up to speed, but to be honest, I am not much of a macOS programmer and TextMate is a fairly sophisticated app. You can probably see where this is heading: vibe coded fixes.

Now, I recognize that some folks may not be keen on this practice and so I make no assumptions or prognostications and I will not storm Allan Odgaard with unsolicited PRs, but I have a bunch of changes that I think could help put TM back in a great place for the other folks out there that still enjoy using it.

@sorbits if you are still out there, thank you for TextMate. I hope that this message finds you well and that you do not find the work distasteful or offensive.

Long live TextMate!

Requirements

• Apple Silicon (arm64); Intel Macs are not supported.
• macOS 26 or later.
• System Ruby 2.6.10 (/usr/bin/ruby) for bundle commands. Override with TM_RUBY if needed.

Download

Grab the latest signed and notarized build from the Releases page.

Feedback

For fork-specific bugs, feature requests, and discussion, file an issue. Patches are welcome too — open a pull request, with or without a matching issue.

For questions about TextMate proper (history, design, upstream behaviour), see the upstream project.

Screenshot

Building

Setup

To build TextMate, you need the following:

• cmake — build system generator
• multimarkdown — marked-up plain text compiler
• ninja — build system similar to make

All this can be installed using either Homebrew or MacPorts:

# Homebrew
brew install cmake multimarkdown ninja

# MacPorts
sudo port install cmake multimarkdown ninja

Running the scm test suite additionally needs git, hg and svn on the PATH.

After installing dependencies, make sure you have a full checkout (including submodules), then configure a build directory and build it:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/textmatelives/textmate.git
cd textmate
cmake -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --target TextMate

The result is build/Applications/TextMate/TextMate.app. Configuring is only needed once; afterwards ninja -C build is enough, and it re-runs CMake by itself when a CMakeLists.txt changes.

Builds are signed with an ad-hoc signature by default. To sign with a real identity, pass its name or hash: -DCS_IDENTITY="Developer ID Application: …".

Building from within TextMate

You should install the Ninja bundle which can be installed via Preferences → Bundles.

After this you can press ⌘B to build from within TextMate. In case you haven't already you also need to set up the PATH variable either in Preferences → Variables or ~/.tm_properties so it can find ninja and related tools; an example could be $PATH:/opt/homebrew/bin.

.tm_properties expects the build directory to be build inside the source tree, which is what the cmake -B build line above creates.

The default target is run. This will relaunch TextMate, but when called from within TextMate a dialog will appear before the current instance is killed. As there is full session restore, it is safe to relaunch even with unsaved changes.

If the current file is a test file then the target is changed to the one that builds and runs the suite it belongs to, and if the current file belongs to an application target other than TextMate.app then that application is built instead.

Build Targets

ninja -C build TextMate   # Build and sign TextMate
ninja -C build run        # Build, sign, and (re)launch TextMate
ninja -C build tests      # Build every framework test suite
ninja -C build io_test    # Build and run one suite (here: Frameworks/io)

Test suites are also registered with CTest, which runs them and reports results together:

cmake --build build --target tests
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

To clean everything, delete the build directory.

Legal

The source for TextMate is released under the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

TextMate is a trademark of Allan Odgaard.