You might ask why we want to rewrite Neovim in Rust. The migration itself may not be particularly interesting, and others may have different motivations. My reasons are highly subjective:

  • I do not want to write C. I do not think C is well suited to modern software development.
  • I want Vim and the ideas behind it to survive for decades to come. I would like people to continue using editors other than VS Code. This requires rapid iteration, and in my opinion, Rust is much better suited to LLM-assisted development than C.
  • Neovim lags behind in support for remote development and development in devcontainers. These are areas that should be improved, and I believe Rust is a better choice than C for this work.
  • The C code does not need to be rewritten in full. C and Rust code can coexist, allowing components to be migrated incrementally.

The project goals are:

  • Rustvim is a fork of Neovim with a long-term goal: evolve the editor’s implementation in Rust while preserving the editing model, configuration, and plugin interfaces. We aim to be compatible with Neovim.

  • Documentation is another part of the work. The Rustvim Book, built with mdBook, should explain how the editor works, how its components fit together, and how they operate.

  • We want to keep the Neovim editor we love while making its internals easier to understand, change, improve, and maintain. Rust lets us make ownership, lifetimes, and component boundaries explicit.

  • The migration is incremental. Existing behavior provides the reference for moving components from C to Rust. Compatibility and behavior tests guide the work, and unavoidable unsafe code belongs at small, explicit interfaces between the two languages. The goal is to develop maintainable Rust implementations as the migration progresses.

  • Compatibility is central to the project. Existing Vimscript and Lua configuration and plugins should continue to work as the implementation changes. Following Vim development is also part of the direction, with Vim9script support as a longer-term goal. Migration bugs will happen; they need to be reported, understood, and fixed against the intended behavior.

Rustvim builds on the work of the Vim and Neovim communities. Their editing model, interfaces, and accumulated knowledge provide the foundation for this project.