Gargo

Gargo is a terminal text editor written in Rust.

Requirements

• Rust stable toolchain
• A terminal with true color support

Quick start

Run with an empty scratch buffer:

cargo run

Open a file or directory:

cargo run -- path/to/file_or_directory

Run optimized build:

cargo run --release -- path/to/file

Installation

Quick install:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/aplio/gargo/raw/refs/heads/master/install.sh | sh

Install a specific version:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/aplio/gargo/raw/refs/heads/master/install.sh | GARGO_VERSION=v0.1.13 sh

Install to a custom directory:

curl -fsSL https://github.com/aplio/gargo/raw/refs/heads/master/install.sh | GARGO_BIN_DIR=$HOME/.bin sh

Checksum verification is enabled when a release includes checksums.txt. Set GARGO_SKIP_VERIFY=1 to skip verification.

• Legacy/manual install still works by downloading a release tarball from GitHub Releases and placing gargo on your PATH.

Supported assets:

• gargo-v<version>-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
• gargo-v<version>-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
• gargo-v<version>-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
• gargo-v<version>-aarch64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz

Source install

cargo install --path .

Web editor (browser)

gargo --server includes a browser-based editor whose modal core runs in-tab as WebAssembly. The wasm bundle is embedded into the binary at build time, so release binaries (and gargo --update) ship it automatically — no extra setup for end users.

When building from source, generate the bundle before cargo build so it gets embedded (it lives in assets/web_editor/pkg/, which is gitignored):

cargo build --lib --target wasm32-unknown-unknown --release
wasm-bindgen target/wasm32-unknown-unknown/release/gargo.wasm \
  --out-dir assets/web_editor/pkg --out-name gargo_wasm --target web

This needs the wasm32-unknown-unknown target (rustup target add wasm32-unknown-unknown) and wasm-bindgen-cli at the exact version of the wasm-bindgen crate in Cargo.lock. If the bundle is missing, cargo build still succeeds and the editor's asset routes report "wasm not built".

Basic keys

• i: enter insert mode
• Esc: return to normal mode
• Ctrl+S: save current buffer
• Ctrl+Q: close current buffer, or quit when it is the last one
• SPC f: open file picker
• SPC p: open command palette
• SPC g: open flat changed-files sidebar with status badges
• SPC G: open Git view
• Mouse: left-drag an editor split border to resize pane widths/heights

More docs

• docs/README.md for architecture
• docs/CONTRIBUTING.md for development workflow