Installation - Textadept

# Textadept

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# Installation

## Requirements

In its bid for minimalism, Textadept also needs very little to run. The GUI version needs only GTK+, a cross-platform GUI toolkit, version 2.18 or later on Linux and BSD systems. A GTK+ runtime is already bundled into the Windows and Mac OSX packages. Textadept also has its own copy of Lua. The terminal (curses) version of Textadept requires a curses implementation like ncurses, but that dependency is only necessary if you wish to run the editor from a terminal.

### Linux and BSD

Most Linux and BSD systems already have GTK+ installed. If not, it is probably available through your package manager. Otherwise, compile and install it from the GTK+ website.

The GUI versions of Textadept in the Linux binary downloads require GLib version 2.28 or later to support single-instance functionality. You can compile Textadept with earlier versions of GLib down to 2.22. For reference, Ubuntu 11.04, Debian Wheezy, Fedora 15, and openSUSE 11.4 support GLib 2.28 or later.

Most Linux and BSD systems already have a curses implementation like ncurses installed. If not, look for one in your package manager, or compile and install ncurses from the ncurses website. You need to have or compile the wide-character version of ncurses, which handles multibyte characters. For Debian-based distributions like Ubuntu, the package is typically called “libncursesw5”.

### Mac OSX

No requirements other than Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) or higher with an Intel CPU.

### Windows

No requirements.

## Download

Download Textadept from the project’s download page by selecting the appropriate package for your platform. For Windows and Mac OSX, more than ¾ of the download and unpackaged application sizes are due to the bundled GTK+. Textadept itself is much smaller.

You can also download an official set of language-specific modules from the download page, but this is optional. The list of language modules in the package is contained here. Textadept includes C/C++ and Lua language modules by default.

## Installation

Textadept is designed to be as easy as possible to install by any user. You do not need to have administrator privileges.

### Linux and BSD

Unpack the archive anywhere.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it where you unpacked the Textadept archive. The modules will be contained in the /path/to/textadept_x.x/modules/ directory.

### Mac OSX

Unpack the archive and move Textadept.app to your user or system Applications/ directory like any other Mac OSX application. There is also a ta script for launching Textadept from the command line that you can put in a directory in your “$PATH” (e.g. /usr/local/bin/), but this is optional.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it, right-click Textadept.app, select “Show Package Contents”, navigate to Contents/Resources/modules/, and copy the unpacked modules there.

### Windows

Unpack the archive anywhere.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it where you unpacked the Textadept archive. The modules will be contained in the textadept_x.x\modules\ directory.

## Running

### Linux and BSD

Run Textadept by running /path/to/textadept_x.x/textadept from the terminal. You can also create a symbolic link to the executable in a directory in your “$PATH” (e.g. /usr/local/bin/) or make a GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc. button or menu launcher.

There is also a textadeptjit executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The textadept executable is recommended.

The textadept-curses and textadeptjit-curses executables are versions of Textadept for the terminal. Run them as you would run the textadept and textadeptjit executables, but from a terminal instead.

#### Problems

It is difficult to provide a single binary that runs on all Linux platforms since the versions of software installed vary widely from distribution to distribution. Because the Linux version of Textadept uses the version of GTK+ installed on your system, an error like:

    error while loading shared libraries: <lib>: cannot open shared object
    file: No such file or directory

may occur when trying to run the program. The solution is actually quite painless even though it requires recompiling Textadept. See the compiling page for more information.

### Mac OSX

Run Textadept by double-clicking Textadept.app. You can also pin it to your dock.

Textadept.app also contains an executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. You can enable it by setting a “TEXTADEPTJIT” environment variable or using `export TEXTADEPTJIT=1` in the terminal. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The non-LuaJIT executable is recommended.

#### Environment Variables

By default, Mac OSX GUI apps like Textadept do not utilize environment variables like “$PATH” from your shell profile. Therefore, any modules that use programs contained in “$PATH” (e.g. the progams in /usr/local/bin/) for run and compile commands will not be found. The solution is to follow these instructions to export whichever environment variables you need. At the very least, set “PATH” to be “$PATH”. You will have to logout and log back in for the changes to take effect.

### Windows

Run Textadept by double-clicking textadept.exe. You can also create shortcuts to the executable in your Start Menu, Quick Launch toolbar, Desktop, etc.

There is also a textadeptjit.exe executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The textadept.exe executable is recommended.

### ~/.textadept

Textadept stores all of your preferences and user-data in your ~/.textadept/ folder. If this folder does not exist, Textadept creates it on startup. You will learn more about this folder later.

## Single Instance

Textadept is a single-instance application on Linux, BSD, and Mac OSX. This means that after Textadept is opened, running `textadept file.ext` (`ta file.ext` on Mac OSX) from the command line or opening a file with Textadept from a file manager will open file.ext in the existing instance of Textadept. You can override this and open the file in a new instance by passing a `-f` or `--force` switch to Textadept: `textadept -f file.ext` (`ta -f file.ext`). When the force switch is not present, files will be opened in the original Textadept instance, regardless of how many instances are open.

Single instance is not supported on the Windows and terminal versions of Textadept.