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Comment by danslo | Hacker News Reader

I tried to switch from neovim to helix for a couple weeks, but noted down the following things that were essential to me and not implemented yet:

- Code actions on save, for example adding Go imports: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/6486

- Fuzzy search with a filepicker like telescope+rg, seems to have been added earlier this year: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/11285

- Automatically updating buffers when the files on disk change (claude, templ, sqlc, etc): https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/issues/1125

- File tree in browser, which has been rejected in favor of a plugin system which has not materialized yet: https://github.com/helix-editor/helix/pull/5768

There were a number of other things too, that I could have lived with. I guess I'll try again in a year or two.

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I rebuild from HEAD using homebrew quite regularly and have maybe had a single crash in years using Helix, so I'm shocked to see Julia report she's had crashes. But because I run HEAD, I can tell you what's actually merged which might not be released yet:

> Code actions on save

There are command on save hooks which solve the problem for Go, but I could see this being not as applicable for other languages.

> Fuzzy search

Man, I'm pretty sure this shipped before telescope was particular stable or popular. Although, I don't recall if Helix originally used the ripgrep backend at first. They reworked it earlier this year and it was a massive improvement.

> Automatically updating buffers

+1 to this. I constantly suspend (ctrl+z) my editor and sometimes forget about it and could really use this prompt.

> File tree in browser

Space+e or Space+E opens a hierarchical file explorer on HEAD, but this is definitely relatively new

Although the file explorer you link there was abandoned, a vim-telescope style explorer was merged earlier this year.

However, when you already have a fuzzy-search based file picker built in, an explorer doesn't bring much extra utility.

Totally disagree. I find having both extremely useful. Once I start to get to know a code base jumping through files with telescope is super useful. But when I'm getting spun up on a project and don't know what files I'm looking for, a file tree is super nice.

> I tried to switch from neovim to helix for a couple weeks

I bounced off after a couple of hours because 35 years of muscle memory for vim commands meant I was making constant infuriating mistakes[0]. Which is a shame because I'd really like to use helix and avoid the neovim config faff.

[0] I did try one of the "vim keybindings for helix" but they were only partially correct and that annoyed me even more.

I have the same issue with Helix not watching and reloading modified files automatically, as I sometimes run external programs modifying those files (templ and sqlc are good examples). Curious about how experienced Helix users are addressing this.

I have file reload binded to key:

    [keys.normal.space.f]
    f = "file_picker_in_current_directory"
    F = "file_picker"
    b = "file_picker_in_current_buffer_directory"
    "." = ":toggle-option file-picker.git-ignore"
    g = "global_search"
    e = "file_explorer"
    r = ":reload-all"
    x = ":reset-diff-change"
    w = ":echo %sh{git blame -L %{cursor_line},+1 %{buffer_name}}"

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