Standalone Acme Editor for Linux, macOS, and Windows

A self-contained build of the acme text editor that runs on modern Linux (X11 or Wayland), macOS, and Windows systems with no external dependencies on Plan 9 tools or infrastructure.

What is Acme?

Acme is a programmer's text editor and development environment created by Rob Pike at Bell Labs as part of the Plan 9 operating system. It uses a mouse-driven interface where any text can be executed as a command or used as an address. It remains one of the most distinctive and productive editing environments ever built.

Origin

This project is derived from plan9port (Plan 9 from User Space), Russ Cox's port of Plan 9 tools to Unix/Linux. The original plan9port is a large collection of programs and libraries that depend on the Plan 9 build system (mk, 9c, 9l), the PLAN9 environment variable, and X11 for graphics.

What Changed

All of the modifications in this repository were done by Claude Code (Anthropic's AI coding agent), with direction and guidance from Blake McBride.

The changes, in rough order:

1. X11 to SDL3 — Replaced the X11 graphics backend in devdraw with SDL3, providing native Wayland support and eliminating the X11 dependency. The new backend (sdl3-screen.c, sdl3-draw.c) uses software rendering via memdraw with texture upload at flush, matching the design of the macOS backend. Since SDL3 is portable to macOS and Windows, this change opens the door to future cross-platform builds.

2. Embedded devdraw — The devdraw graphics server, previously a separate process, is compiled directly into the acme binary.

3. Embedded fontsrv — Font serving via FreeType and fontconfig is built into the binary. No external fontsrv process needed.

4. Embedded plumber — Plumbing rules (the Plan 9 mechanism for dispatching actions on text) are compiled into the binary with sensible defaults for Linux (using xdg-open for URLs, images, and PDFs). Users can still override rules via ~/lib/plumbing.

5. GNU make build system — Replaced the Plan 9 mk build system entirely. All 18 static libraries and the acme binary are built from source using gcc and GNU make. No Plan 9 build tools (mk, 9c, 9l, 9ar) are needed.

6. No PLAN9 environment variable — The runtime dependency on $PLAN9 has been eliminated.

7. Removed everything acme doesn't need — The hundreds of other Plan 9 commands and tools have been stripped out. What remains is acme and the libraries it depends on.

8. Built-in Win command — Type Win in a tag bar and middle-click it to open an interactive shell session inside an acme window. Commands are typed directly into the buffer and executed by pressing Enter. Output appears inline. This replaces the original Plan 9 win program, which required 9P infrastructure.

9. Pipe commands without 9P — Pipe commands (|sort, <date, >wc) work using direct pipes and temp files instead of the original 9P filesystem. Select text, type |sort, and middle-click it to sort the selection in place.

10. Comprehensive user manual — A full-length book in the book/ directory, written in LaTeX for 6"x9" print format. Covers all aspects of acme from basic mouse operations to the sam editing language, plumbing, and customization.

11. Conventional keyboard navigation — Arrow keys, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down, and Delete work as expected in a modern editor. Up and down arrows move the cursor one line at a time with sticky column tracking. Ctrl+arrow combinations provide additional navigation (beginning/end of line, page scroll, jump to start/end of file). See KeyBoard.md for the full reference.

12. Tilde expansion in file paths — File paths beginning with ~/ are expanded to the user's home directory. Type ~/src/foo.c in a tag and Get or right-click it to open the file.

13. Font selection and fallback — Fonts can be chosen with the -f/-F command-line options or the $font environment variable. If the built-in default font is not installed, acme automatically falls back to the closest installed monospace font instead of refusing to start. acme --fonts lists all installed font names and acme --help explains everything.

Building

The codebase supports four build targets, all from the same source tree (platform differences are guarded by #ifdef):

Linux (native)

See Linux.md for detailed instructions.

sudo dnf install gcc make SDL3-devel freetype-devel fontconfig-devel zlib-devel  # Fedora
sudo apt install gcc make libsdl3-dev libfreetype-dev libfontconfig-dev zlib1g-dev  # Debian/Ubuntu
make

Dynamically linked against system libraries.

macOS

See macOS.md for detailed instructions.

brew install sdl3 fontconfig freetype pkg-config
make

Uses the SDL3 backend for native macOS window management (no X11 or XQuartz required). Ctrl-click and Alt-click emulate the middle and right mouse buttons for users without a three-button mouse.

Windows

See Windows-native.md for detailed instructions. Produces a single standalone acme.exe with no MSYS2 or Cygwin runtime dependency — only Windows system DLLs. Built with the MSYS2 toolchain (UCRT64 by default) and statically linked.

make

The resulting bin/acme.exe can be copied to any Windows 10/11 machine and run with no other files required.

A pre-compiled Windows binary is available at https://blakemcbride.com/files/acme.exe. Download it and run directly — no installation or dependencies needed.

Clean

make clean      # remove .o files and bin/acme[.exe]
make realclean  # also remove lib/*.a files

Running

bin/acme

No environment variables or configuration files are required. Acme will open a window and is ready to use.

Fonts

A font is written Name/Size/font, e.g. DejaVuSansMono/13a/font: Name is a font name as listed by acme --fonts, Size is the height in pixels, and a trailing a turns on antialiasing. The path of a Plan 9 bitmap font file also works.

The font is chosen by, in decreasing precedence:

1. the -f (main) and -F (alternate) command-line options
2. the $font environment variable (sets both fonts)
3. the built-in default, DejaVuSansMono/13a/font

If the built-in default is not installed, acme falls back to the closest installed monospace font (as chosen by fontconfig) and prints a warning. A missing font requested explicitly with -f, -F, or $font is a fatal error with suggested fixes. Run acme --help for the full story.

Learning Acme

Acme's interface is unusual. Here are the essentials:

• Three mouse buttons — left selects, middle executes, right searches/opens
• Any text is a command — type ls -l anywhere, middle-click it to run
• Pipe commands — select text, type |sort, middle-click to sort in place
• Tag bar — the top line of each window contains commands you can execute
• Right-click a filename — opens it
• Right-click file:123 — opens file at line 123
• Win command — middle-click Win in a tag to open an interactive shell

The docs/ directory contains detailed documentation including Rob Pike's original paper, the Plan 9 manual pages, keyboard and mouse shortcut references, and a video tour.

The book/ directory contains a comprehensive user manual in LaTeX (6"x9" trim size). Build it with make in that directory (requires XeLaTeX and makeindex). It covers installation, the mouse-driven interface, keyboard navigation, built-in commands, shell integration, the Edit command (sam language), plumbing, practical workflows, and customization.

For a full introduction, see Russ Cox's tour of Acme.

License

This project inherits the plan9port license. See the LICENSE file for details.