Zed

Welcome to Zed, a lightning-fast, collaborative code editor that makes your dreams come true.

Development tips

Dependencies

• Install Xcode from https://apps.apple.com/us/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12, and accept the license:

  1	sudo xcodebuild -license

• Install homebrew, node and rustup-init (rustup, rust, cargo, etc.)

  1	/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
  2	brew install node rustup-init
  3	rustup-init # follow the installation steps

• Install postgres and configure the database

  1	brew install postgresql@15
  2	brew services start postgresql@15
  3	psql -c "CREATE ROLE postgres SUPERUSER LOGIN" postgres
  4	psql -U postgres -c "CREATE DATABASE zed"

• Install the LiveKit server, the PostgREST API server, and the foreman process supervisor:

  1	brew install livekit
  2	brew install postgrest
  3	brew install foreman

• Ensure the Zed.dev website is checked out in a sibling directory and install its dependencies:

  1	cd ..
  2	git clone https://github.com/zed-industries/zed.dev
  3	cd zed.dev && npm install
  4	npm install -g vercel

• Return to Zed project directory and Initialize submodules

  1	cd zed
  2	git submodule update --init --recursive

• Set up a local zed database and seed it with some initial users:

  Create a personal GitHub token to run script/bootstrap once successfully: the token needs to have an access to private repositories for the script to work (repo OAuth scope). Then delete that token.

  1	GITHUB_TOKEN=<$token> script/bootstrap

• Now try running zed with collaboration disabled:

  1

  cargo run

Common errors

• xcrun: error: unable to find utility "metal", not a developer tool or in PATH
  • You need to install Xcode and then run: xcode-select --switch /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer
  • (see https://github.com/gfx-rs/gfx/issues/2309)

Testing against locally-running servers

Start the web and collab servers:

If you want to run Zed pointed at the local servers, you can run:

Dump element JSON

If you trigger cmd-alt-i, Zed will copy a JSON representation of the current window contents to the clipboard. You can paste this in a tool like DJSON to navigate the state of on-screen elements in a structured way.

Licensing

We use cargo-about to automatically comply with open source licenses. If CI is failing, check the following:

• Is it showing a no license specified error for a crate you've created? If so, add publish = false under [package] in your crate's Cargo.toml.
• Is the error failed to satisfy license requirements for a dependency? If so, first determine what license the project has and whether this system is sufficient to comply with this license's requirements. If you're unsure, ask a lawyer. Once you've verified that this system is acceptable add the license's SPDX identifier to the accepted array in script/licenses/zed-licenses.toml.
• Is cargo-about unable to find the license for a dependency? If so, add a clarification field at the end of script/licenses/zed-licenses.toml, as specified in the cargo-about book.

Wasm Plugins

Zed has a Wasm-based plugin runtime which it currently uses to embed plugins. To compile Zed, you'll need to have the wasm32-wasi toolchain installed on your system. To install this toolchain, run:

Plugins can be found in the plugins folder in the root. For more information about how plugins work, check the Plugin Guide in crates/plugin_runtime/README.md.