commit 38f7e1bbc00a8db862d9a2323dfe5b0b2b6103ae
parent c35842c6a51a82bd94724a20d025a5614344f217
Author: JayVii <jayvii[AT]posteo[DOT]de>
Date: Wed, 16 Oct 2024 17:18:24 +0200
feat: add post about helix-term
Diffstat:
1 file changed, 81 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/posts/helix-term.md b/content/posts/helix-term.md
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+---
+author: "JayVii"
+title: "REPL Support for Helix"
+date: "2024-10-16"
+summary: "An easy process to send code from inside the Helix editor to console"
+tags: ["development", "helix", "tech"]
+---
+
+## Motivation
+
+For almost a year now, I am an avid user of the "post-modern text editor"
+[Helix](https://helix-editor.com/), which replaced [NeoVim](https://neovim.io/)
+for me entirely. In helix I write all kinds of configs, texts and code,
+primarily in [R](https://cran.r-project.org/). Helix works flawlessly with it,
+especially with the built-in LSP. The only gripe I had with this was, that there
+was no easy way to write R-code in helix and send it directly and interactively
+to R's REPL, as you would in typical R IDEs like
+[RStudio](https://posit.co/products/open-source/rstudio/).
+
+So earlier this year, I tried to workaround that issue by experimenting with
+[TMUX](https://github.com/tmux/tmux/wiki) and its `send-keys` feature. The
+results of this are available as installable script(s)
+[in my git-repository](https://src.jayvii.de/pub/helix-term/).
+
+## Functionality
+
+The idea behind it is quite simple: A TMUX session with a pre-defined name is
+spawned that runs the REPL we want to send our code to. This could be R, Python,
+Bash, ... Next, Helix sends code in its selection to some process
+[via its `pipe-to` command](https://docs.helix-editor.com/commands.html). This
+process' job is to send the highlighted text to tmux line-by-line.
+
+In its simplest form, the REPL in tmux could be started as:
+
+```bash
+tmux new-session -s "my_repl" /usr/bin/R
+```
+
+The process that send text to this tmux session, let's call it `send-to-tmux.sh`
+could be as easy as:
+```bash
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# read piped input
+readarray -t lines
+
+# send input to tmux line by line
+for line in "${lines[@]}"; do
+ tmux send-keys -t "my_repl" "$line" "Enter"
+done
+```
+
+We could set up a keyboard shortcut for this in Helix in selection mode (hitting
+Ctrl-C twice):
+
+```toml
+[keys.select]
+C-c = { C-c = [":pipe-to ~/.local/bin/send-to-tmux"] }
+```
+
+## Using helix-term
+
+The final script(s) in my
+[git-repository](https://src.jayvii.de/pub/helix-term/) are slightly more
+complicated to allow a more streamlined workflow, such as sending the current
+code-paragraph in insert or normal mode from helix and setting launching a
+separate tmux-session for each working-directory, so you can run multiple such
+processes at the same time.
+
+In short, you can use my `helix-term` setup by running `helix-term /usr/bin/R`
+in the same working directory as the Helix process and hitting `Ctrl-C` twice
+for the code chunk you would like to send to the `R`-process.
+
+## Noteworthy alternatives
+
+In a conversation
+[with another Helix user](https://social.jayvii.de/objects/VHQJgjNndkY/thread),
+we found that we might have different use-cases. This user came up with another,
+yet similar approach that tries to turn Helix a little bit more into an IDE:
+[hide](https://codeberg.org/landesfeind/hide). If `helix-editor` is too bare
+bones for your use-case, maybe `hide` is a better approach for you.
