Turbokod

A modern full featured IDE in the style of Borland Turbo C++ 3.0. Based on the modern C++ reference implementation of TurboVision magiblot/tvision.

The project has two layers:

1. A TUI toolkit in the spirit of Turbo Vision: cell-based double-buffered canvas, raw-mode terminal driver, tagged-union events, a Drawable trait with widgets, windows, menus, dialogs, scroll bars, dropdowns, status bar, and a desktop window manager.
2. A code editor / IDE built on top of that toolkit: multi-cursor editor, syntax highlighting via TextMate grammars, LSP and DAP integrations, spell checking, project-wide find/replace, file tree, git blame and gutter, run/debug targets, editorconfig support, undo/redo, soft wrap, minimap, tab bar.

The editor runs in any terminal, but ships with an optional native macOS .app wrapper (Swift / AppKit front-end loading the Mojo backend as a dylib) that gives it a real window, system clipboard, font fallback for emoji/CJK, and dock icon.

Themes

docs/themes.md for the full list.

Quickstart

./run.sh examples/desktop.mojo            # the editor / IDE demo
./run.sh examples/desktop.mojo path/...   # ...opening file(s) or a project dir
./run.sh examples/hello.mojo              # minimal windowed greeting
./run.sh examples/boxes.mojo              # arrow-key-driven draggable frame
scripts/run_tests.sh                      # pure-data test suites, no TTY needed

If you use pixi:

pixi run desktop
pixi run hello
pixi run test

run.sh does mojo build -I src ... (not mojo run) and execs the resulting native binary, caching it under .build/ keyed by entry-point path. We build instead of JIT-running because mojo run silently ignores -Xlinker, and the editor links against libonig (for TextMate grammar regexes). First build is ~8–12 s; cached re-runs are essentially free.

macOS app bundle

To build the native wrapper:

./run_swift.sh                    # restore last session
./run_swift.sh /path/to/project   # open a project
./run_swift.sh path/to/file.py    # open a file

run_swift.sh builds the Rust shim staticlib (app/turbokod-shim), the Mojo dylib (src/turbokod/native_api.mojo → .build/libturbokod.dylib), and the Swift binary (app/swift/TurboKod.swift → .build/turbokod_swift), then assembles them into .build/TurboKod.app and execs it. Swift owns the AppKit run loop / windows / menus / Core Text rendering; the Mojo dylib is the Desktop model.

License

The Mojo port is MIT-licensed (see LICENSE). Vendored TextMate grammars under src/turbokod/grammars/ carry their upstream MIT/Apache licenses (per grammars/README.md). The porting from the C++ TurboVision port was done with Claude Code, with that codebase also under MIT license.