Open-source Nova alternatives

This repository, known as Code - OSS, is where Microsoft develops Visual Studio Code together with the community. Visual Studio Code is a code editor that pairs the simplicity of a lightweight editor with the tools developers need to edit, build and debug, and it runs on Windows, macOS and Linux. Roadmap and iteration plans are published alongside the code.

Main capabilities include code editing, navigation and code understanding support, lightweight debugging and integration with existing tools. A rich extension model lets people add languages, themes and tooling. The editor is built with TypeScript on Electron and is updated monthly, with a daily Insiders build for those who want the newest changes.

The source code is available under the MIT license. The downloadable Visual Studio Code product is a distribution of this repository that adds Microsoft-specific customizations and ships under a traditional Microsoft product license. That distinction matters for anyone who wants to build a fully open-source editor straight from the repository.

Neovim is a text editor that refactors Vim to simplify maintenance, encourage contributions, split work among several developers, and allow advanced user interfaces without changes to the core. Most Vim plugins work with it, as do Ruby and Python-based ones, so existing setups largely carry over.

Key features include modern GUIs, an API that can be accessed from many languages such as C, Go, JavaScript, Python, Lua and Rust, a terminal emulator embedded in the editor and open to scripting, asynchronous job control, data shared across multiple editor instances, and support for XDG base directories. The full feature list is available in the built-in help.

Pre-built packages are provided for Windows, macOS and Linux, and many distributions package it, including Homebrew, Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch Linux. It can also be built from source with CMake. The README includes guidance for moving over from Vim. GitHub lists the license as 'Other', so check the repository for details. It suits developers and writers who like modal editing and want a scriptable editor.

Zed is a code editor built for speed and for editing together with other people, created by the team behind Atom and Tree-sitter. It is written in Rust and available for macOS, Linux and Windows, with a web version still only under discussion. It is developed by Zed Industries, a for-profit company.

The code is mostly GPL-3.0-or-later, with some Apache-2.0 components that are labeled as such, and the project uses tooling to keep third-party license information correct. Installation is by direct download or through local package managers on each platform, and the repository documents how to build Zed for each operating system.

Zed suits developers who want a fast native editor with collaboration built in and are comfortable with a GPL-licensed codebase. Sponsorship donations through GitHub Sponsors go directly to the company, and contributions are welcome through the guidelines in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Helix is a modal text editor written in Rust and inspired by Kakoune and Neovim. Its editing model is heavily based on Kakoune, whose design decisions the author largely agreed with while building it. It is released under the MPL-2.0 license and is primarily a terminal-based editor.

It offers modal editing in the Vim style, several simultaneous selections, language server support out of the box, and incremental syntax highlighting and code editing built on tree-sitter. The author has said they may explore a custom wgpu-based renderer, along the lines of Emacs. Shortcuts and keymaps are documented on the project website.

The README notes that only certain languages currently have indentation definitions. Installation instructions, a FAQ and a community Matrix space are linked for help. Helix suits developers who like modal editing and want language tooling that works out of the box without assembling many plugins.

VSCodium is a repository of scripts that automatically build Microsoft's open-source vscode source code into freely licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration. The maintainers stress that it is not a fork. The result is a code editor and IDE that feels like Visual Studio Code but drops the Microsoft branding, telemetry and the licensing terms of Microsoft's own distribution.

Releases come as stable and insiders builds and can be installed through Homebrew, WinGet, Chocolatey, Scoop, Snap, Flatpak, the Arch User Repository, or apt, dnf and zypper repositories, as well as deb, rpm and tar downloads. The build scripts are written in Shell and published under the MIT license, so anyone can inspect how the binaries are produced. Extensions are a common area of difference, so review the project's notes before relying on a specific one.