gitui-org/gitui

Support opening inside of Helix

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#2,556 opened on Mar 11, 2025

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 (6 comments) (10 reactions) (0 assignees)Rust (721 forks)batch import
feature-requestgood first issue

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Description

Yazi (A file explorer written in Rust) recently added support for using yazi right inside of Helix via :insert-output

You can use Lazygit right inside of Helix as well. This is described in the Helix wiki (https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/wiki/Recipes#git-integration)

I wanted to try out gitui. So I gave it a shot and wow its about 3x faster (benchmark: undoing changes for 1,200 files). So I want to use it now. I tried using it in Helix's :insert-output but it does not work.

:insert-output uses Helix's shell_impl_async to turn the output of the passed cmd: &str and display it in the editor

You can check Yazi's PR on how they implemented it and it may be implemented here in a similar way.

:insert-output gitui would ideally allow you to use gitui right within Helix, but at the moment it just freezes the screen.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Study the Yazi pull request for supporting Helix's `:insert output`, then implement a similar non interactive output mode for gitui that works with Helix's shell impl async.
Tech stack
rust
Domain
cli
Issue type
Feature
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
1-3 hours
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
Rust
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
70