The Error Log

How to Use Kakoune (or Anything from WSL) in Windows

Kakoune is a versatile text editor that I can't recommend enough. The user interface and plugin APIs are almost as stable as Vim. Given its active development pace, few things in my dot files are broken between releases, and I think that's really remarkable.

One of the aspects which make Kakoune so stable is that it delegates most of the scripting tasks to POSIX shells. Auto-format the buffer? Spawn a shell. Sort lines? Spawn a shell. Want a simple if statement? Spawn a shell.

And... that's exactly why Kakoune is not available (and never will be) for Windows. It's a sad thing for fan boys like me, since I still need to run Windows for... reasons.

I tried Helix, but it was too unstable and too opinionated for a text editor. It crashed randomly, and then threw away my whole editing session. That's a risk I'd rather not take when doing serious work.

WSL to the Rescue

Despite the funny name, WSL is actually a very decently designed system. They've made reasonable ways to pass stuff around between Windows and the things inside WSL. After some research work, I found a way to use Kakoune to edit Windows files:

  1. Make a Batch file named kak.bat [1]:

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    @echo off

if "%~1"=="-t" (
  set tmux_cmd=tmux new-session
) else (
  set tmux_cmd=
)

if "%~2"=="" goto NO_FILE

for /f "usebackq tokens=*" %%a in (`wsl.exe wslpath -u '%~2'`) do wsl.exe %tmux_cmd% kak %%a

goto DONE

:NO_FILE

wsl.exe %tmux_cmd% kak

goto DONE

:DONE

  2. Make a shortcut that would launch the Batch file. Fill in the Target:

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    wt.exe kak.bat -

    And if you want to start a Tmux session:

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    wt.exe kak.bat -t

  3. Profit! You can now use the shortcut to launch empty Kakoune sessions. To edit a file in Windows, drag & drop it onto the shortcut. You can even add Kakoune to Windows' SendTo menu by Win + r --> shell:SendTo and then drop the shortcut there.

[1]Please don't judge me. This is literally the first Batch file I have ever written.

Now, whenever I'm editing a text file in Windows, there's a whole Linux virtual machine running in the background. Still a good trade-off for a decent text editor, eh?