Zen: A distraction-free code editor based on Zed (codeberg.org)
from arendjr@programming.dev to programming@programming.dev on 01 Jun 13:16
https://programming.dev/post/51311197

Zen is simply a fork of Zed for those who are happy to use an IDE free from AI, telemetry, and other cloud-based services. I use it as my daily driver and intend to maintain it so that I can also use it as the base for some non-developer tooling I want to create.

Only tested on Linux for now, though Zed’s support for other platforms should be (mostly?) intact.

#programming

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thoughtfuldragon@lemmy.blahaj.zone on 01 Jun 13:19 next collapse

What’s the plan for ongoing maintenance?

arendjr@programming.dev on 01 Jun 13:23 collapse

I’ll aim to sync changes from upstream about once a month. But given that I don’t have prebuilt binaries or anything, for now I expect only people enthusiastic enough to build from source to use it :)

thenextguy@lemmy.world on 01 Jun 13:34 next collapse

What’s wrong with zedless or gram that you did this?

arendjr@programming.dev on 01 Jun 13:41 next collapse

Nothing wrong with them! But since I want to build another tool on top of it (for fiction/novel outlining and writing) I figured this was a good exercise to become familiar with the codebase. And since I still do some Rust development, having control over both my IDE and my writing software seemed an added benefit :)

staircase@programming.dev on 01 Jun 15:43 collapse

I tried gram, and it was rife with bugs. Couldn’t recall the specifics. Interested in zedless, however.

Matty_r@programming.dev on 02 Jun 12:04 collapse

Hasn’t had an update in nearly a year, according to their github. Bit disappointing.

0xDREADBEEF@programming.dev on 11 Jun 19:55 collapse

Because it’s on Codeberg now. Last updated 22 hours ago. Version 2.2.0 was released 3 days ago.

codeberg.org/GramEditor/gram

Matty_r@programming.dev on 11 Jun 20:47 collapse

Awesome! Thanks for pointing that out. I’ll give it a go tomorrow for sure.

galaxy_nova@lemmy.world on 01 Jun 13:47 next collapse

Aren’t all of these features able to be disabled in zed itself? If so what does a fork offer me instead?

arendjr@programming.dev on 01 Jun 14:36 collapse

Yeah, if you don’t mind the UI clutter/teasers, it doesn’t make much of a difference. For now, the most noticeable difference is that the default layout is more old-school, with the project layout and the git panel on the left-hand side again, though even without this fork you can configure it to be like that too.

galaxy_nova@lemmy.world on 01 Jun 16:26 collapse

Yeah so far I’ve been content. It’s good that forks are popping up for stuff like this though, if zed decides to go the way of Microsoft in any way it’s nice to know there are some alternatives already.

badmin@lemmy.today on 01 Jun 15:53 next collapse

Does it qualify as cognitive dissonance maintaining a fork of a partially vibe-coded product to remove vibe-coding tooling because you hate vibe-coding?

arendjr@programming.dev on 01 Jun 18:00 next collapse

Hehe, I suppose it might to some extent 😅 But well, I don’t wish to control how others do their coding, and it would be silly to ignore other’s code altogether because they used a different method than the one I prefer.

neopolitan@ani.social on 03 Jun 06:19 collapse

Maybe, but don’t ruin the vibe over it.

cupcakearmy@lemmy.ml on 01 Jun 16:30 next collapse

Wish you all the luck. Wondering: why not “ship” a configuration? All AI features and layout can be configured through JSON afaik.

arendjr@programming.dev on 02 Jun 06:44 collapse

Thanks!

As for the motivation of the fork, basically two reasons:

  • Even though you can disable AI features and configure the layout, the teasers and some UI elements remain as they try to draw you in.
  • I want to use their UI framework and editor for a different project too, so I want to be able to start that from a trimmed down base anyway.
joyjoy@piefed.social on 01 Jun 17:27 collapse

Good luck with discoverability. You’ll be competing with the Zen browser.

arendjr@programming.dev on 02 Jun 06:47 collapse

Heh, the name wasn’t chosen to reach a huge audience anyway. If I get too many users, I might lose my zen over trying to support them 😂

But I’m happy to have a few folks along who don’t mind building their IDE from source.