interacting with REPLs

[JurajLieskovsky]

Hi, before switching to helix I used Sublime Text for a couple of years where I really liked the plugin SendCode which I used to send commands to a REPL (usually Julia) opened in an independent window. As I was preparing to switch to Wayland where xdotool (used by the plugin) does not have an analog, I started searching for an alternative way of performing similar actions.

What came up with, was using remote control of kitty a cross-platform terminal that can be used even better with helix.

If I have helix opened in an instance of kitty, I can open a new terminal window after sending helix to the background (ctrl-z) for a second:

kitty @ launch --type=os-window --title repl

. In the new terminal, I then open a REPL to which I can send lines of code using the ':pipe-to' command:

:pipe-to kitty @ send-text --match 'title:repl' --stdin

directly from the editor in the original terminal (using fg to bring it back). One thing that is pretty cool is that I can also use the expand_selection command to select whole functions, structs, etc. before sending them to the REPL.

The only issue I have is how to efficiently call the :pipe-to ... command repeatedly. I know it lives in the : register, but I'm not sure if I can efficiently move it to a more permanent register and then recall it.

Ideally one would make a plugin where even the new terminal would be called by some alias in helix with its name stored in some project file, afaik plugins are not really a thing in helix atm.

So if anyone has a suggestion on how I could improve the workflow, I am all ears.

[David-Else]

I use Kitty and Helix like this, what do you think?

[keys.normal.space]
c = { r = ":sh kitty @ send-text --match 'title:^Terminal' cargo run \\\\n", t = ":sh kitty @ send-text --match 'title:^Terminal' 'clear \\ncargo test \\n'" }
z = [":pipe sgpt --code --no-cache 'Replace this code with a better version and complete it.'"]
Z = [":pipe-to cat > /tmp/helix-gpt", ":append-output cat /tmp/helix-gpt | sgpt --code --no-cache 'Finish this code. Start typing from where I left.'"]

I also made this: https://github.com/David-Else/kitty-terminal-project-launcher

[JurajLieskovsky]

That's pretty cool, I didn't know helix was so flexible when it comes to creating new keybindings.

Thinking about it in the evening I too realized that I can write bash scripts, which can then be run from helix, allowing me to do more complex things.