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The Zed Debugger Is Here
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ChrisArchitect 1y agoEarlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44311958 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44311958
- tdhz77 1y agoLove zed, wish it would work with Claude max. It’s amazing
- rhgraysonii 1y agoIs this not doable with its MCP configuration? Today I tried this and wrote it down after it worked well for me if Zed allows similar usage and config https://www.bobbby.online/post/a-clever-hack-claude-code-as-an-mcp-for-windsurf-cursor https://www.bobbby.online/post/a-clever-hack-claude-code-as-...
- rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 1y agoI havent's keep up with Zed, how's the Windows version coming along? Is anyone here using it?
- sathyabhat 1y agoThere’s no build available yet but there is a doc on how to build it https://zed.dev/docs/development/windows https://zed.dev/docs/development/windows
- que-encrypt 1y agozed remote ssh on windows would push me to it instantly, unfortunately it relies upon this pr being merged (I think, would love more input): https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/29145 https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/pull/29145 It is finally at the review stage, I really hope it can get merged soon!
- fancy_pantser 1y agoI've been using the unofficial builds via scoop for the last two months. It's working great so far. I use it on a Macbook as well and I haven't found any features that are missing or buggier on Win11. Really enjoying the new agent version of the AI assistant, which I use with both Claude API and devstral locally via Ollama. https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds
- lordofgibbons 1y agoI've gone full-time with Zed for the past month or so and really like it. Love the fast start times. There was a blurry font issue on linux, but that seems to have been fixed for me. Not sure what caused it.
- candrewlee 1y agoZed is fantastic. I've been making the leap from neovim to zed lately, and it's been an great experience. Everything feels snappy, and I love how well they've integrated Vim bindings. Their agent mode is nice as well. It's clearly an underdog to VSCode, so the extension ecosystem isn't quite there yet... but for a lot of the things I've used it for, it's sufficient. The debugger has been the big missing feature for me and I'm really glad they've built it out now - awesome work.
- echelon 1y agoHow is Zed with auto-completing Rust code? I love how fast Windsurf and Cursor are with the "tab-tab-tab" code auto-completion, where nearly everything suggested is spot-on and the suggestions keep on rolling, almost automating the entire task of refactoring for you. This form of autocomplete works really well with TypeScript and other scripting languages. IntelliJ / RustRover never got anywhere close to that level of behavior you can get in Cursor and Windsurf, neither in conjunction with JetBrains own models or with Co-pilot. I chalked it up as an IDE / model / language mismatch thing. That Rust just wasn't amenable to this. A few questions: 1) Are we to that magical tab-tab-tab and everything autocompletes fluently with Rust yet? (And does this work in Zed?) 2) How does Zed compare to Cursor and Windsurf? How does it compare to RustRover, and in particular, JetBrains' command of the Rust AST?
- lionkor 1y agoIt's fantastic for Rust, it's my main IDE which I've written e.g. voltlane.net in. Fantastic software, and the LLM integration is everything you need IMO (in a good way).
- WD-42 1y agoZed is written in Rust by a bunch of Rust lovers so it's really got first class support for it.
- csomar 1y ago> How is Zed with auto-completing Rust code? I think they all use LSP, so whether you use neovim or Zed there shouldn't be a difference? (not 100% sure, but that's my basic understanding of LSP).
- tomjuggler 1y agoNot Zed's fault but I'm still stuck with VSCode because Zed doesn't support PLatformIO (or rather PlatformIO doesn't support Zed). I'm guessing that this extension support problem will continue to be a barrier to uptake for a while.
- zamalek 1y ago> Not Zed's fault Zed only supports language extensions, so it is in part responsible. If you're using embedded rust then PlatformIO isn't really needed; probe-rs is extremely capable and straightforward.
- tomjuggler 1y agoI'm going to go ask the Zed AI now if it can port my massive 10 year old C++ project to Rust and see what happens. Gotta keep moving forward Otherwise maybe the platformio cli might be enough
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoThis is becoming a recurring issue; plenty of innovation being put in new and faster tooling to replace the JS-based daily drivers we've had for the past decade+, but there's a huge ecosystem of 3rd party addons to those now which is slowing adoption down; I'm also thinking of Prettier/ESLint vs Biome, the only thing stopping us from going full Biome is that we need some ESLint plugins. That said, it's getting better; as another commenter pointed out, LSP is one of the best things to happen to this space. There should be a standard for editor plugins, too.
- rvz 1y agoI think competent software engineers should actually read the "Under the hood" section, before they lose the core understanding on how debuggers work and are integrated into editors. Upon reading the Rust code implementing the Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) in Zed, some very junior SWEs will quickly point out that they would prefer only "self-documenting code" and would go as far as to removing all comments or even believe that "If it has comments, its probably bad code". For sophisticated software that implements a defined protocol that is architected to be scalable in any piece of complex software, I prefer these comments that explains why a particular interface is designed the way it is and how it fits into the software (Zed) in this case if it were to be widely re-used like a plugin system. This blog post is excellent in explaining this debugger integration in the editor and it makes me want to consider using Zed; it just needs an improved extension ecosystem. [0] https://zed.dev/blog/debugger#under-the-hood https://zed.dev/blog/debugger#under-the-hood
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- neurostimulant 1y agoIf be surprised if Zed aren't dogfooding their own AI agents to help writing some of the Zed code. The AI often put a lot of comments on the generated code, and sometimes needs a lot of comments to produce the right code.
- haiku2077 1y agoThey literally do this in their AI Agent demo - they add a feature to Zed using Zed's agent.
- eddythompson80 1y agoEver since Linux support came out (2 years ago?), I go to check if they, finally, support “non-retina” “LoDPi” (a.k.a: a regular screen) yet, and sadly no :/
- marton78 1y agoIt's an ugly workaround, but if you install BetterDisplay (it's a free tool) and set your LoDPI screen to HiDPI, text rendering looks good.
- jaoane 1y agoThey don’t support windows, they don’t support regular screens on Linux… are they a Mac shop basically?
- sedatk 1y agoStill waiting for a Windows build.
- xboxnolifes 1y agohttps://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds
- esperent 1y agoIs it usable?
- xboxnolifes 1y agoI've used it to install zed fine, but I haven't messed around with zed too much. I do most of my development within WSL with vscode, and zed doesn't had a great WSL2 development experience.
- esperent 1y agoI'm the same. I followed a guide to set up Zed under WSL2 and got it working, but not in any way usable.
- sureglymop 1y agoIt's a niche feature, but what's keeping me from switching yet is that they zed doesn't support ctrl+scroll to zoom/change font size yet. Because I am accustomed to a non-US keyboard layout that doesn't make the regular key bindings for changing zoom easy, I got too used to doing it this way. It's honestly looking to be a great modern IDE with almost everything I'm wishing for.
- nlitened 1y agoIt is funny that accidental scroll while holding Ctrl changing font size is one of my most hated features in IDEs, like who the hell ever needs to change their optimal font size to any other value. It's fascinating to me that this is a dealbreakingly important feature for someone else.
- 7bit 1y agoI often use it when sharing my screen. I like the feature quite a lot.
- j16sdiz 1y agoYou use them in pair programming, when you peer sit a little bit further
- dmit 1y agoLive coding during a presentation or on stream is another use case in addition to the sibling comments.
- jen20 1y agoI constantly do this when navigating large files. Zoom out for context (better than a minimap), zoom in for detail. I use the trackpad for it though, not ctrl/cmd-+. I also do it constantly in web browsers, and am consistently amazed by the way that minor changes to font sizes break the layout of any website that has had a designer near it.
- sureglymop 1y agoWell it seems quite expected doesn't it. Different people and groups of people have different customization needs. I change my font size if I sit back or in a different position or use my standing desks.
- throwaway290 1y ago> To simplify the setup process, we've introduced locators, a system that translates build configurations into debug configurations. Meaning that you can write a build task once in tasks.json and reference it from debug.json — or, even better, rely on Zed's automatic configuration. Does that work if my build is Docker based?
- haiku2077 1y agoSorta. IIRC you would need to make a version of your container that serves DAP on a port for the editor to connect to?
- AbuAssar 1y agoI’m thrilled to see Zed evolve into a featured, lightweight IDE. IMHO Debug Adapter Protocol (DAP) and Language Server Protocol (LSP) are the best things happened to programming tooling in the last decade. (I wrote this comment in another thread about the same link but didn't hit the frontpage)
- laserbeam 1y agoI'm very happy to see work on the debugger. This is the main feature preventing me from switching full time to zed. Unfortunately, "here" is not accurate. Not having a watch window, a stack trace view, and no mention of data breakpoints in the announcement still keeps the "beta" tag. I know those features will arrive eventually, but what is described is definitely not sufficient for 97% of my debugging sessions. I would also have liked to see more in the announcement of multiple simultaneous debug sessions, and on how multithreaded debugging is planned. There are really cool things that can be done with multithreaded debugging further down the line that I'd be interesting in hearing about (like how RemedyBG has a DAW-like UI for freezing certain threads, or hitting one button to "solo" a thread and freeze all others).
- aequitas 1y agoI have to try out the debugger yet. However I share your sentiment but for the Git feature. The basics are there but it is just not complete yet to fully replace my current git workflow. Hope they keep focus on that as well.
- koito17 1y agoNothing has been able to replace Magit for me, yet. Having a Zed UI for Git like Magit is my dream feature request. With that said, Zed has effectively replaced all of Emacs for me, besides Magit. Additionally, typing in other editors feels noticeably higher latency than Zed :) I've been daily driving Zed for almost a year now -- works best on TypeScript, Rust, and Go projects, in my opinion. There's just so much functionality Zed has to build out to compete with modern editors (agentic coding, collaboration, debugging, edit prediction, task runners, version control). With that said, for pair-programming sessions with friends, Zed has been perfect since Linux gained screenshare support. However, there's a noticeable "pause in development" for collaboration in order to implement major features like Agentic Coding, and smaller-but-essential features like direnv integration, IME support (typing Japanese in the terminal used to be a clunky, error-prone task), dealing with the endless permutations of Python tooling so that Python files aren't a sea of red lines, etc.
- mort96 1y agoI was interested in Zed, but lost all interest when they started integrating "AI". I'm tired of "AI" everywhere. I'll just stick with Neovim until something better comes around. Which probably won't happen until after the "AI" bubble bursts.
- reddalo 1y agoMe too. I don't want AI, and if it's there, I want to be able to completely remove it. Zed is forcing it, so I'm staying on VSCodium.
- nurumaik 1y agoWhat's forcing AI in Zed though? agent.enabled = false and it's gone, no?
- mixmastamyk 1y agoProbably also requires an api key, no? So would be difficult to force. I have a firewall, OpenSnitch, so don’t have to worry much about programs trying to connect. But definitely would prefer they don’t unless directed. How does zed handle it?
- haiku2077 1y agoThere's a pair of config settings to turn off all of the AI features: features.edit_prediction_provider=none agent.enabled=false There's additional config to set if inline assistance is automatic, only when the user presses a key, fully disabled, etc.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoI’d prefer an option at first start perhaps, to turn it on.
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- yangcheng 1y agoI wish Zed can better support claude code, like offering native IDE integration. with Claude code SDK this seems doable?
- writebetterc 1y agoIt's surprisingly slow. Switching files in the tab list has a noticeable delay. Typing is higher latency than both Emacs (lsp-mode activated) and my web browser. Also uses approximately 60MiB more than my Emacs. It starts fast though! I wouldn't complain about this stuff if it wasn't for their tagline being 'it's fast' and they're losing to Emacs Lisp (not a language amenable to being very fast) with a highly optimized C core. I looked at their plugins, they're compiled into WASM and run in some VM. Maybe that's part of it?
- GrayShade 1y ago> I looked at their plugins, they're compiled into WASM and run in some VM. Maybe that's part of it? No. The ones I've looked just set up stuff, like launching a language server. They shouldn't be involved in typing. I think it's related to the GPU usage. It's easy to introduce delays when you do GPU compositing, and the OS will already be doing its own. As for emacs, IIRC they did some ugly things to update the UI directly instead of going through the normal event loop, which was causing compatibility issues later on.
- frou_dh 1y agoTalking of Emacs, there is a very well designed DAP-based debugger available as the 'dape' package. https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dape.html https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/dape.html The way it's designed (incl. having no dependencies) suggests that they will be angling for it to be included with stock Emacs at some point.
- nurumaik 1y agoHow did you manage to make zed slower than emacs? From my experience, latency in zed sometimes even feels negative. Everything is instant: editing, lsp commands, file switching In contrast, all my attempts at emacs ended up in dropping it due to latency issues (mostly because I work on remote machines)
- writebetterc 1y agoI think you answered how you managed to induce latency in Emacs :).
- Rucadi 1y agoUntil zed doesn't work on windows (publicly) unfortunately can't use it in my working computer
- wiz21c 1y agoNon official builds for Windows: https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds/releases https://github.com/deevus/zed-windows-builds/releases The opengl one fails on my PC but the "regular one" (?) zed.exe seems to work. Didn't test much as I have discovered that today :-)
- taminka 1y agodear zed ppl, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE configure your language detection properly wrt C and C++! every single editor on earth makes this exact same mistake where they think all C is valid C++ (it's not, at all), and mistakenly recognises C files as C++, even when there's an accompanying compile_commands.json file that specifies a C standard and even when files contain invalid C++ (but valid C) it's a delightful little editor if it weren't for this thing...
- haiku2077 1y agoYou can customize the rules for detecting a language by file name/path in your settings. The problem is in cases like creating a new file the editor has to guess.
- Andrew_nenakhov 1y agoI tried using Zed for a few months, but somehow ended up with a conclusion, that VSCode serves my needs better. Just a sum of small issues, like the need to manually re-apply coloring schemes to some files.
- 90s_dev 1y agoFor some reason I've found myself wanting a "lighter VS Code" lateley, which is ironic considering I used VS Code for the past 10 years because it is so lightweight. So I've wanted to try out Zed, but it's just ... weird to go back to a closed source editor, especially one that's so focused on imitating copilot, which seems like an odd feature to shift most focus on.
- superlopuh 1y agoI really want to switch to Zed from Cursor but the battery usage for my Python project with Pyright is unjustifiable. There are issues for this on GitHub and I'm just sad that the team isn't prioritising this more.
- vinnymac 1y agoIt’s funny you mention this because I have an issue with Cursor where if I leave it open for more than a few hours my M3 Max starts to melt, the fans spin up, and it turns out to be using most of my CPU when it should be idling. Zed on the other hand works perfectly fine for me. Goes to show how a slightly different stack can completely change one’s experiences with a tool.
- sahil_sharma0 1y ago[dead]
- desireco42 1y agoTurbo Pascal as ideal IDE...
- karunamurti 1y agoFunny thing is I created the Turbo Pascal blue yellow colorsxcheme for Zed and have been using it for the past 6 months or so.
- bitbasher 1y agoI can't get past the fact that an IDE has a "login" button on it.
- mixmastamyk 1y agoHow prominent? Can you remove it from main window?
- haiku2077 1y agoJetbrains and Visual Studio Code also have login buttons. In Zed, login is only required for internet features like some of the commercially hosted LLMs, and the multiplayer editing feature.
- ramon156 1y agoZed feels like what Lapce, Helix and Neovim couldn't achieve in the time they spent. I started using Helix back around 2021-2022 and just couldn't get over the bugs and lack of integration. It was good, but PHP support (I was working at an older company) was bad. Neovim felt closest to a nice editor but there were some popular community-driven plugins that were very stubborn, and alternatives were just very slow. I was also just overwhelmed by the choices I needed to make for something stable. Lapce just felt like a VSCode clone that didn't do anything special. Looked cool, but I did not feel like it was ready for a daily driver (And it still doesn't). Zed became a favorite in a short amount of time, and I'm extremely grateful for it every day. The debugger is a nice addition.
- user3939382 1y ago> PHP support (I was working at an older company) Not sure why PHP needs a qualifier like this.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- pjmlp 1y agoPeople keep forgetting the UNIX tools they love sooo much predate PHP, follow the same worse is better mentally, and trace back to 1969, but for some strange time travel reason, they are considered modern.
- Bolwin 1y ago[dead]
- hu3 1y ago> ...like a VSCode clone that didn't do anything special. Interesting way to qualify the most popular editor of human history.
- quietbritishjim 1y agoThey said that Lapce didn't do anything special (over VSCode). Not that VSCode is nothing special, as you seem to have interpreted it.
- einpoklum 1y agoI did not know the Zed editor before. Now, seeing that it's a GUI application, why would I use it, given that it seems to: 1. have no menus, 2. have no toolbars, 3. be AI-focused?
- thoroughburro 1y agoIt has menus, a toolbar, and the AI integration is opt-in.
- nixpulvis 1y agoI'm tempted to invest in switching to Zed full time, but there are enough small bugs with toolbars or dialog popups not working the first time that it makes me wary.
- DrBenCarson 1y agoZed is what real product development looks like. So nice to have an option that doesn’t repackage the whole damn chromium engine (again)
- 59nadir 1y agoI like some of their choices, but I wouldn't say that releasing your product for a minority operating system only, then following up with yet another minority operating system much later, then stuffing AI features in there when you don't even have debugger support... The list goes on; one man's "real product development" is another's list of mistakes. They got the baseline feature set right, IMO, but probably could've spent some more time looking at the actual, real demographics of development (and who is most likely to appreciate performance as a feature and share those ideals).
- culebron21 1y agoI wonder if they advertize the editor as the most AI-enabled, how much do they vibecode the editor themselves? /s Jokes aside, after SublimeText as the main tool, and VSCode for Rust debugging, I'm trying this one. Now with more themes and plugins than a year ago, it can be set up to look and function a lot better.