Bob the Editor!

Watch screencast

"Can we build it?"

"Derp de derrrrr!"

It takes like 2 seconds, all you need is a C compiler. To check if it's there type:

$ cc --version

Install it (if needed) with:

$ sudo apt-get install gcc make

Build Bob

Download bob.c and (from its directory) enter:

$ make bob

Install Bob

Put the binary on your $PATH to install Bob:

$ mv bob /usr/local/bin/bob

Use Bob

$ bob [FILENAME]

Clojure evaluation

• Run the repl script (set to executable with chmod +x repl) to connect to a Clojurescript REPL via JavaScriptCore. You must have inotifywait installed on your machine, as well as Planck.

• Pressing Ctrl+e evaluates the whole buffer and prints the result of the last expression.

What I wanted

A truly minimal console-based text editor that a beginning programmer can easily read, comprehend and modify. Then when I started writing Clojure full-time I wanted to be able to evaluate code right from the editor.

What I actually wanted

When people tell me to use a certain text editor - to be able to punch them in the face and say,

"I use BOB, biotch."

TODO:

Try on Windows or Mac and add specific instructions if needed.

Figure out how to use pREPL and show results right in status bar. Doing eval by hijacking Planck is an obviously hacky solution and would be nice to bring this functionality into the editor itself.

Credits

Based heavily on the Kilo editor with a Clojure layer added for the syntax highlighting and REPL eval. If you're interested in learning more about how the code works you should definitely check out Snaptoken's tutorial. The unique and remarkable part about it is that it does not depend on ncurses, or any library, which means there's not even a need for a Makefile.