- cross-posted to:
- text_editors
- cross-posted to:
- text_editors
Helix does not aim to be a better vim / neovim. Thus, for example, there are officially no vim bindings and Helix follows the selection → action model. Helix is also a relatively new project.


There are many cases I actually prefer the quickfix list to an interactive picker:
:Cfilterto filter things matched in the quickfix list and:colder/:cnewerto navigate the history of the quickfix list without having to rerun the command:cdo norm gccto comment the matched lines (with the vim-commentary plugin), run a macro with:cdo norm @q, or:cdo yank Ato put all the matched lines in thearegister for example. You can also do stuff like:cdo -10,+10g/re/pto print all lines matching some regular expressionrewithin the range of 10 lines before to 10 lines after the match.:Git diftoolto get diffs. Vim also has support for parsing the output of many compilers and linting tools so you can use e.g.:compiler cargofollowed by:maketo build the current project with cargo and get any build errors in the quickfix list.In short, interactive pickers are better for browsing, but the quickfix list is better for scipting and holding on to data for longer without having to rerun commands, and can with some basic scripting be used for more things.
Afaik helix doesn’t have diff capabilities which is also a major thing missing from my git workflow.
I expect some of these things to make it into helix eventually, particularly git stuff, but I would be surprised if they add support for more weird janky vim stuff like the quickfix list and ex commands, which is a valid design decision, but they are also very useful tools once you get your head around them.