Release 0.6.0

New Features

Many features with new default keybindings have been added. Keybinding mentioned
in these release notes are for Flow mode unless otherwise mentioned. Please
check the command palette or the online command & keybinding reference
(ctrl+f2 or ctrl+k ctrl+s) for the active keybindings in other modes.

LSP Completion

LSP completion suggestions support has been added. Completion requests are
triggered with ctrl+space and supports fuzzy search of completion suggestions.
Accept a suggestiong with Return or Tab.

Clipboard history

A history of cut & copy operations can be opened with shift+alt+v. The history
is grouped by multi-cursor operations, so you can copy with multiple cursors and
then paste with a single cursor or multiple cursors. Paste operations now accept
an integer argument (alt+1, alt+2, etc.) to select a group from the history
to paste without first opening the clipboard history.

Tabbar Tab Improvements

Tabs in the tabbar have received many quality of life improvements. There is now
a file type icon, and on hover, a close icon. Tabs can be dragged to a new
position with the mouse, or re-ordered with the keyboard with the new keybindings
ctrl+shift+page_up and ctrl+shift+page_down. Recently closed tabs can be
re-opened with ctrl+shift+t.

AST selection & navigation improvements

The expand_selection command to expand the selection to the parent AST node
has been improved and now should work in any sitution. shrink_selection and
the various sibling node selection commands will now select the node at the
cursor if there is no selection.

Tasks

Tasks can now be added and deleted directly from the run task menu. Also the
run_task command now accepts a string and with add and run a task in one step,
which is useful for running tasks directly from the command line. For example:

flow --exec 'run_task:git grep -n TODO'

Automatic Light & Dark mode selection

If your terminal supports it, flow will now select a theme to use based on the
system color scheme. The light mode and dark mode themes are independently
configurable. There is also a toggle command in flow to manually switch modes
bound to alt+f11, and a command line argument.

Widget styles

Palettes and menus can now be display in a range of different styles. You can
switch through the available styles while a widget has focus with the alt+f9
keybinding. The selected widget style is persisted on a per widget type basis.

Goto & Byte Offsets

The goto mini mode now supports {row}:{column} syntax. Also, pressing b in
goto mini mode will toggle goto byte offset mode. Byte offsets are also
supported on the command line by prefixing the offset with the letter 'b'. For
example:

flow src/main.zig:b123

Also, goto and goto_offset commands now accept integer parameters to directly
jump.

Underline mode

Underline mode, triggered with ctrl+_, ctrl+= or ctrl+plus, will underline
the current line with various characters.

Git status

A new git status palette lists changed and untracked files and lets you open
them. It may be opened with the ctrl+shift+g keybind or by clicking on the
git branch widget in the status bar.

Kitty extensions for unicode widths & multi cursors

We now support kitty char width protocol extension for much better unicode
support in kitty. We also support kitty's multi-cursor protocol extensions to
show proper terminal cursors when editing with multiple cursors.

Tab width settings

The tab width may now be interactively changed on a per buffer basis and there
are new commands to set the tab width for the current buffer, session and
globally.

FreeBSD

We now produce binary release for FreeBSD, thanks to Zig 0.15 support for
FreeBSD cross-compilation.

Win32 improvements

The win32 GUI renderer now supports wide characters. Also, filesystems without
proper support for fstat will work. This means flow now works correctly under
WSL1 and WSL2 on windows filesystems.

Helix mode improvements

Helix mode has seen major improvments, mostly thanks to Igor Támara.

• :x alias for :wq
• % select_all
• zz scroll_view_center
• shorcuts for buffers
• closing and saving including close all and save all
• close other buffers and reload all
• feature parity with helix copy paste (P before, R replace, r after)
• zt zc zb scroll keybinds and G support
• space g bound to open changed and new files reported by git
• F, T, t, f select and extension movements
• match helix clipboard behaviour on delete
• r to replace with a character
• extend word to right

Vim mode improvements

Vim mode now has vim style aliases for buffer commands and a :qa! aliase for
quit_without_saving.

New file types

• fsharp
• commonlisp
• csproj
• msbuild props
• gettext-po
• awk
• latex
• nickel
• elm
• hcl
• perl
• verilog
• reStructuredText

New themes

• kanagawa
• alabaster

Zig 0.15.2

Flow now builds with Zig 0.15 and has been fully ported to the new std.Io.Writer
interfaces.

Misc Minor Changes

• delete_line & select_line: bound to ctrl+shift+k and shift+alt+e
  respectively, with full multi-cursor and integer argument (repeat) support

• insert_command_name (command & keybind reference) is now additionally bound to
  ctrl+k ctrl+s

• plain move_begin is now bound to ctrl+k home

• selections are sensibly merged if they overlap

• files & projects

  • add open_most_recent_file command
  • allow open_file to open projects (directories)
  • make change_project call open_recent instead of jumping to last file
  • refresh open_recent palette when the project is done loading the file list
  • add flow mode keybind for find_in_files to overlay/palette mode
  • always list the active project first in the recent projects list
  • use case insenstive matching for file_browser completion
  • file_browser now completes into subdirs when there is only one match

• display indent mode in status bar

• improve markdown highlighting

• configuration

  • make hover_time configurable
  • add option lsp_output "quiet" to reduce LSP log verbosity

• add keybinds for keypad keys

Fixes

Many, many fixes. Too many to really list here. See commits marked fix: in the
full git changelog for the full list of fixes.

Contributors

CJ van den Berg
Igor Támara
Jonathan Marler
Loris Cro
geemili
Alex Rønne Petersen
Daggerfall-is-the-best-TES-game
jmcaine
n0n
zai1208

Downloads

flow-control.dev (source only)
github.com (binaries & source)
codeberg.org (binaries & source)

Release 0.5.0

New Features:

• indent with tabs - Added an indent_mode configuration option and
  related support for indenting with tab characters. indent_mode may be
  configured to "auto" (the default), "spaces" or "tabs". "auto"` mode
  will detect the indent mode automatically when opening a file.

• automatic whitespace collapsing - Trailing whitespace is now
  automatically removed when inserting new lines with any of the
  smart_insert_line* functions. Also, inserting a new line inside a range of
  whitespace will automatically collapse whitespace to the right of the cursor.

• auto hide tab bar - The tabs widget will now only be shown when more than
  one tab is open. This can be configured with an integer parameter on the tabs
  widget. For example: tabs:2 => show the tab bar when there are two or more
  tabs (this is the default), tabs:0 => always show the tab bar.

• branch status auto refresh - The git branch status widget will now auto
  refresh on file save and focus in/out terminal events. This should keep it
  almost entirely up to date. You can still refresh it manually by mouse click.

• improved handling of unsupported requests send by language-servers - This
  fixes csharp-ls and possibly others.

Fixes:

• fix: crash in the tabs widget when buffers are destroyed during tab switch
• fix: reduce horizontal space waste in command palette
• fix: persist syntax_no_render in editor state when switching tabs
• fix: update buffer file type in set_type
• fix: refresh git branch status on project switch

Release 0.4.0

Celebrating 1000 github stars!

New Features:

• File type configuration - File types are now user configurable. Flow comes with a built-in
  list of file types that you can now modify and save to the configuration directory with the
  Edit file type configuration command. You can also create whole new file types simply by adding
  new files to the configuration directory in the file_type folder. The file type configuration
  defines the name, icon, description, formatter and language server, extensions and first line
  matching rules for a file type.

• Auto Save - Enable auto save for the current buffer with the Toggle auto save command. This
  will automatically save the current buffer on every change. Debounce time is the currently
  configured frame rate. You can also enable auto save globally with the enable_auto_save
  configuration option, and limit which file type have auto save automatically enabled with the
  limit_auto_save_file_types configuration option (which is a list of file types, e.g.
  ["zig","rust"])

• Highlight columns - Use the Toggle highlight columns (toggle_highlight_columns) command
  (bound to shift+f11 in flow mode) to enable a background dim effect at the configured column
  positions. The columns to highlight are configured via the highlight_columns configuration
  option.

• Smart insert & delete - Brace pairs like (), [], {} and "" are now handled intelligently like
  in most code editors. Also, leading whitespace is now intelligently deleted in indent_size
  steps.

• Format on save toggle - Format on save can now be toggled for the current buffer with the
  Toggle format on save command (toggle_format_on_save).

• Git support - The status bar now shows a summary of the project's git status include current
  branch, number of changed files and number of unpushed/unpulled/stashed commits. Also, Flow now
  respects all of git's file ignore machanisms. Diffs do not yet use git, but that is planned.

• Auto create parent directories - Flow will now automatically create parent directies if
  necessary when creating new files.

• Tilde expansion - The Open file and Save as commands now correctly support expanding ~
  to the user's home directory.

• Improved panic handling - Flow now has much improved panic handling and will leave the
  terminal in a known good state for all panics and segfaults. Additionally, release and nightly
  builds are now available with full debug information that will produce fully detailed backtraces
  on crash. This should help catch and fix those rare but pesky crashes. Please submit issues!
  Additionally, there is a configuration option to automatically start and connect gdb to a
  crashing flow instance. (linux only)

• Terminal support - Flow now supports the kitty explicit text width protocol. This improves
  unicode character rendering on terminals that support it and superceeds wcwidth when available.

• Language server protocol - Flow language server protocol backend is now fully asynchronous.
  This means that slow language servers cannot cause pauses while editing.

• Language support

  • Added powershell syntax highlighting
  • Added hurl syntax highlighting
  • Added rpmspec syntax highlighting
  • Added protobuf syntax highlighting
  • Added uxntal syntax highlighting
  • Added C# formatter (csharpier)
  • Added PHP language server (intelephense)

• Themes

  • Themes can now be customized with the Customise theme command
  • Added the entire base16 theme collection
  • Added the hypersubatomic theme

• Home screen - The home screen text and list of commands can now be customized. Also, the
  current build version and build type are now shown in the bottom right corner of the home screen.

• tree-sitter - Queries are now biniary compiled and stored in the flow executable. This
  greatly improves load times and reduces binary size. Also, incremental tree-sitter parsing is
  now checked for parsing errors and will fallback to a full re-parse if errors occur.

• Integer arguments - Flow now supports integer arguments to many commands similar to emacs and
  vim. Related bindings have been added to Flow, Emacs, Vim and Helix modes. Pending integer
  arguments are shown in the status bar.

• Vim mode improvements - Insert mode now produces automic undo steps, much more like Vim. Many
  vim mode bindings have been improved to more closely match Vim in their behaviour. Visual line
  mode was added.

• Helix mode improvements - Many helix mode bindings have been improved to more closely match
  Helix in their behaviour.

• New keybindings

  • Flow mode
    home/end now work in palettes
    ctrl+shift+F5 => reload file

  • Vim mode
    ctrl-c => exit insert mode
    :e! => reload file
    gt => next tab
    gT => previous tab
    ctrl-v => enter visual block mode
    < => unindent
    > => indent
    * => find work at cursor
    J => join line
    dgg => cut to beginning of buffer
    dG => cut to end of buffer
    f => move/select forward to char
    F => move/select backwards to char
    t => move/select forward until char
    T => move/select backwards until char
    N => goto previous match
    cc => change whole line
    C => change to end of line
    D => delete to end of line
    cw => change word right
    cb => change word left
    zz => scroll view to center
    w => [VISUAL] select word right (vim)
    W => [VISUAL] select word right
    e => [VISUAL] select to end of word right (vim)
    b => [VISUAL] select word left (vim)
    B => [VISUAL] select word left
    gg => [VISUAL] select to beginning of buffer
    G => [VISUAL] select to end of buffer
    c => [VISUAL] change word right
    C => [VISUAL] change to end of line
    D => [VISUAL] delete to end of line

• New & updated commands

  • copy_file_name => [NEW] Copy the current buffer file name (and optionally line number) to the
    clipboard.
  • reload_file => [NEW] Reload the current file from disk (mainting undo).
  • find_file => [NEW] Alias for open_recent.
  • save_file_with_formatting => [NEW] Format and save the current file. Independant of the current
    value of enable_format_on_save.
  • save_file_without_formatting => [NEW] Save the current file without first formatting it.
    Independant of the current value of enable_format_on_save.
  • open_file => [UPDATED] Open file will now detect if the current selection contains a valid file
    path, including optional line number. If it does, it will be opened immediately without first
    prompting.
  • join_next_line => [UPDATED] Join next line will now collapse whitespace.
  • shell_execute_stream_output => [UPDATED] Will now follow output tail if cursor is at buffer
    end.

• Command line improvements

  • --new-file => Create a new file when starting Flow.
  • --scratch => Create a new scratch (ephemeral) buffer when starting Flow.
  • --exec => You can now pass string arguments to commands by separating them from the command
    name with a colon.

• UI improvements - Many minor usability and visual UI improvments

  • The results pane now closes if Find in files mode is cancelled
  • The clock widget now supports multiple digit styles
  • Status bar widgets can support parameters for width or style depending on the widget
  • Scrollbars and file icons can be enabled/disabled via configuration options
  • Inline diagnostics (and gutter symbols) can now be toggled with the
    Toggle display of diagnostics inline command
  • Line numbers can now be displayed in various styles (toggled via middle click and/or config)

Fixes:

• Add legacy input encoding compatible undo keybinding in emacs mode
• Allow .cmd along with .exe for Windows executables
• Fixed broken shifted keybinds for Helix mode
• Fix palette crashing when its items's length is exceeded
• Fix restoring of last_find_query from editor state
• Fix make keybind module respect command.suppressed_errors list
• Allow font names longer than 31 characters in win32
• Fix panic on extra long plane names
• Don't stop unindenting on blank or full unindented lines
• Make sure to show_home if no files are opened via command line
• Add workaround for LSPs sending junk null messages (omnisharp)
• Don't truncate scratch buffer names in tabs and terminal title
• Prevent unexpected message errors on missing LSP binary
• Replace std.unicode.utf8Decode with safe function that cannot panic on invalid UTF-8 input
• nudge_delete should handle cursor moving to same line as delete
• Remove multithreaded buffer access in background async differ
• Remove multithreaded buffer access in project_manager
• Word/line wise dragging should keep the original word/line selected
• Remove prefix from paths in ripgrep results
• Use iso date format for default date instert keybind
• Workaround broken dir.statFile on WSL1
• Left an right movements jump to selection boundary
• Prefer targetSelectionRange over targeRange if both are provided by LSP
• Fix flicker: home screen should not load if we have a file to open
• Update thespian to fix subprocess file descriptor race
• Force ripgrep to never try search stdin
• Bracketed paste should check for ctrl+j and insert \n
• Render control codes in mini buffer input with unicode control code symbols
• Proactive close subprocesses on early exit in shell module
• Fix paste in goto mode
• Don't match against legacy unshifted keys when we have extended input text
• Remove blocking project manager cal...

Release 0.3.3

New features:

• Major improvements to vim mode keybindings (thanks to @lulvz)
• File type icons in the buffer switcher
• File type icons in --list-languages output
• Colorized task output buffers
• New --no-persist to prevent new projects from being persisting
• New close_project command bound to del in recent projects list
• New --project command line parameter
• Indicate that a project is open in the recent projects list
• New command open_version_info to show build version information
• New command toggle_inline_diagnostics
• New gutter numbering styles ascii, digital, subscript, superscript and a command gutter_style_next to switch between them

New file types:

• astro

New themes:

• Zenbones theme collection

Fixes:

• #169 fix heap corruption on macos when decompressing unicode case data
• spawn at least 4 worker threads to avoid timeouts on single cpu systems
• restore eol_mode in undo/redo/reset operations
• restore previous file type when switching buffers
• prevent integer overlow if view top moves past file end in relative numbering mode
• translate command line column from byte position to actual column
• update cursor target column after nudge_insert/_delete

Release 0.3.2

Fixes:
- #167 - Allow get_version_info to succeed if git rev-parse fails. This allows building with version info on a detached HEAD.

Release 0.3.1

New features:
- Improved styling of tabs
- User customizable tab styles that can be edited with the open_tabs_style_config command
- All cursors and selections are now restored when switching back to a previously open buffer
- Ephemeral buffers can now only be saved with save_as
- Windows binary releases are now packaged as zip files

New commands:
- open_tabs_style_config
- open_version_info
- open_font_test_text

Fixes:
- #144 - Never attempt to log a raw cbor message

Release 0.3.0

Major New Features:

• Win32 GUI - Yes, flow can now render itself in a win32 GUI window for all those terminal impaired windows users (with D3d11 shader rendering). The GUI binary can be built with zig build -Dgui --release=safe and is called flow-gui.exe. Functionality in this GUI version of flow is identical to the TUI version, although with this release there are some minor renderer features still missing such as curly underlines, mouse cursors and double wide characters. Thanks to @marler8997 for the huge amount of work he put into this. There are a few GUI specific commands to zoom in/out and select a font face. GUI specific configuration options are stored in a new gui_config file.

• Multi-buffer support - A new buffer manager module means you can now switch buffers without first saving them. The recent files list has gained a dirty indicator so you can see which files need to be saved and there is a new command switch_buffer the will bring up a list of currently open buffers (with fuzzy search). The home screen now also has a save_all command for those times you just want to exit without saving each file individually first. There is a delete_buffer command that is bound to the delete key when in the buffer selector palette. Deleting a buffer will remove it from the buffers list and free it's undo history entirely.

• Tabs - There is a a new tabs widget that you can use to switch buffers with the mouse or a keybinding to the next_tab/previous_tab commands. In the default configuration it is added to the top bar. You can close a tab with middle mouse click.

• Task runner - You can now run commands inside flow and have their output placed in a buffer. Tasks are remembered per project. The default keybinding for the task palette is alt+!. Task output buffers are ephemeral and will be deleted when closed if not saved to a file first.

• Shell command bindings - You can now bind shell commands to keys and have the output inserted into the current buffer, a new buffer, or the log. The commands are shell_execute_insert and shell_execute_log. See src/keybind/builtin/flow.json for some examples.

• LSP: Rename symbol - Thanks to @travis flow now has LSP rename_symbol support. This is done a little differently in flow to most other editors. When running the rename_symbol command we add cursors at all the symbol references and let you rename them interactively. Cross file renames are not yet supported, but will show up in the references list for you to jump directly to them and perform the rename yourself if you so desire.

• New config file format - Flow now uses a much simpler configuration file format that is nicer to edit manually. Conversion from the old .json config file is automatic and will not lose any configuration. Also, it is now possible to include nested configuration files with the include_files option.

• Much improved whitespace rendering - Flow now uses a map of the rendered view to process whitespace rendering after finishing the main render pass. This fixes a few minor whitespace rendering bugs, and more importantly, allows easy and fast rendering of more whitespace related features. There are new modes: leading, eol and tabs, to render just subset of whitespace. And, best of all, flow now highlights leading (ie. spaces before tabs) and trailing whitespace errors.

• Beam cursor mode mouse select - Selecting with the mouse when you have a beam cursor active now gives selection behaviour like a GUI editor. ie. the position of the selection is calculated gap to gap instead of char to char.

Changes to input modes:

• Flow select mode - Press ctrl+space in flow input mode to enter a select mode that lets you extend your selection with regular movement keys.

• Emacs input mode - Emacs input mode keybindings are now mostly complete and include all the basic movement commands, selection mode (also ctrl+space) and LSP commands. Thanks to @marler8997 for this work.

• Vim input mode - Vim input mode keybindinds have improved, but are still incomplete. New are vim style half and whole page movements and more ways to enter instert mode.

• Helix input mode - Helix input mode is also improving, but still very far from complete. Helix style selections (inclusive) have added in this release with more cursor movements still to come.

New commands:

• create_new_file - Create a new file that can be named with the save_as command.
• pause_undo, resume_undo - Pause/resume undo history. Useful for reducing undo steps generated by command sequences.

New file types:

• sql
• systemverilog

New configuration options:

• gutter_symbols - Enable/disable diagnostics symbols in the line number gutter.
• default_cursor - Set the default cursor. One of default (the terminal default), block_blink, block, underline_blink, underline, beam_blink or beam

New themes:

• mellow

Minor New Features:

• Show screen dimentions on resize
• *BSD support
• Tracking branch and upstream is now shown in --version output
• copy now copies the current line if there is no selection
• Remove existing cursor if clicked again in add cursor mode (alt+click)
• Support inheritance between input modes within an input namespace
• Add a bullet to inline diagnostic messages
• Don't render diagnostic messages if there is too little space
• Use a smaller NL symbol
• Support pasting from the native windows clipboard
• Upgrade cursors to block cursors when multi-cursor editing
• Separate binding key seqences with space instead of '>'
• Clear file list and log if no find_in_files matches are found
• Support matching of shifted keybindings

Fixes:

• project: don't abort early on project restore_state
• palette: prevent crash on select(0)
• gutter: add missing abs to rel conversion in primary_click/_drag
• disable slow mouse_idle_timer
• editor: send view and cursor position updates when number of document lines changes
• utf-8: perform utf-8 sanitazation on buffer insert_chars
• palette: cancel when clicking outside of a palette instead of activating the current item
• project: use after free on fast project switching
• editor: prevent an integer overflow in editor.cancel_all_selections() on project switch
• windows: fix a race in the subprocess module
• editor: clamp cursor to buffer in toggle_cursel_prefix
• editor: don't attempt to render off the bottom of the screen
• version: make gen_version_info a little more robust
• editor: add pretty error if clipboard request is denied by terminal
• keybind: provide fallback handling for legacy terminals the don not provide shifted key info
• windows: matching of alt+shift+ keybindings on windows
• windows: normalized vaxis windows console input

v0.2.1: Release 0.2.1

Release 0.2.1

New features:
- Input view now shows the parsed input event in a keybind compatible syntax
- Cursor shape configuration (via keybind mode configuration) is now supported for mini and overlay modes

Fixes:
- Hover highlights are now correctly positioned in lines with tabs and/or wide characters
- Find in files matches with control characters in the match are now rendered correctly (escaped)
- Fixed non-tree-sitter builds

v0.2.0: Release 0.2.0

Release 0.2.0

New Features Summary:

• Binary release builds

• User configurable keybindings

• Native Windows support

• Command palette with fuzzy matching

• Recent project directories palette with fuzzy matching

• File type palette

• Support CRLF line endings and changing the line ending mode

• Support for loading non-UTF-8 files with auto convertion to UTF-8

• Configurable indent size and tab width

• Very large file support

• New file list view for find_in_files results

• New diagnostics view for language server diagnostics

• Theme selection palette

• Better support for alpha in themes

• New editor commands:

  • show_diagnostics (open the diagnostics view)
  • save_as (with path completion)
  • expand/shrink_selection (based on tree-sitter AST)
  • open_previous_file
  • switch_case
  • toggle_syntax_highlighting
  • force_terminate (exit without saving and an error code)
  • insert_command_name (show bindable command names palette)

• New CLI options & changes:

  • --literal disable file name parsing for line numbers
  • --list-languages show language server/formatter availability
  • --no-syntax disable syntax highlighting
  • --exec execute command(s) on startup

• New language server features:

  • goto_declaration/_implementation/_type_definition
  • hover
  • references (find all references)

• UI features & changes:

  • Faded background for modal palettes
  • Configurable mode specific cursor shapes (block, bean, underline)
  • Configurable status bars (top & bottom)
  • Clock status bar widget
  • Spacer status bar widget
  • Improved terminal title
  • Mouse resizable panel views
  • Set terminal background to match editor (see enable_terminal_color_scheme)
  • Support for terminal inband resize messages

• New configuration options:

  • enable_format_on_save
  • enable_terminal_color_scheme

• New themes:

  • Catppuccin Mocca, Latte, Frappé and Macchiato
  • Gruvbox Material Dark & Light
  • Spacedust

• New file types & languages:

  • mail
  • odin
  • cmake
  • gleam
  • julia
  • swift
  • hare
  • vimscript
  • typst
  • elixir
  • super-html
  • yaml
  • nim
  • kdl