eval-exec/neomacs

"I started Neomacs because I love Emacs, I respect Emacs, and I want to evolve the legendary Emacs into the ultimate modern powerhouse." — Eval Exec

✨ "While other editors can save your files, only Emacs can save your soul." ✨

Emacs, rewritten in Rust — unleashed on the GPU, fixing what 40 years of C never could.
Built for 100% compatibility with the Emacs ecosystem you already have — your config, your packages, your muscle memory.

Install · Showcase · Animations · Architecture · FAQ · Discussions

NEO Emacs keeps everything that makes Emacs Emacs — your init.el, your packages, your muscle memory — and rebuilds the machinery underneath: the display engine runs on the GPU, and the ~300,000-line C core is reimplemented in Rust. GNU Emacs itself serves as the test oracle, so every rewritten subsystem is verified to behave identically. (Why rewrite Emacs?)

[!IMPORTANT]

NEO Emacs is a work in progress. Expect rough edges, breaking changes, and missing

features — bug reports are very welcome.

[!NOTE]

NEO Emacs is a hard fork of GNU Emacs (Lisp tree synced to emacs-31.1). The C core

has been fully replaced by Rust. Fork provenance and rationale: FAQ.

Showcase

Latest videos

Watch more demos and development updates on Eval Exec's YouTube channel.

Feature demos

Cursor, buffer-switch, and scroll animations — GPU-rendered at display refresh rate:

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/85b7ee7b-3f4a-4cd2-a84f-86a91d052f11

More: 4K video, inline browser, inline terminal, rounded box faces…

Inline 4K Video Playback — DMA-BUF zero-copy, GPU backend

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/275c6d9a-fced-44f6-8f43-3bbd2984d672

Inline 4K Images — GPU-decoded, won't block the Emacs main thread

Inline Web Browser (WPE WebKit) — GPU backend, DMA-BUF zero-copy

Inline Terminal (Alacritty) — GPU-backed terminal embedded in a buffer

GPU Text with Rounded Box Faces

Highlights

• GPU display engine — text, images, and effects rendered via wgpu

• Rich media in buffers — inline 4K video (typed Rust GStreamer + VA-API

• Animations everywhere — 8 cursor modes, 21 scroll effects, 10 buffer

• Hackable below the Lisp line — in GNU Emacs, hackability ends where the C

• Compatibility as the contract — your init.el, packages, and muscle memory;

• Pure-Rust core — no C left: the Elisp evaluator, bytecode VM, GC, portable

• GUI or terminal — the same binary renders on the GPU or in a TTY (neomacs -nw)
• What's next — true multi-threaded Elisp and a concurrent zero-pause GC

Install

Prefer system packages? Download them from Releases:

| Platform | Packages | |----------|----------| | Linux | .deb · .rpm · tarball · AppImage (x86_64, aarch64) | | macOS (experimental) | .dmg · .zip · .tar.gz (Apple Silicon) | | Windows (experimental) | installer .exe · portable .zip (x86_64, aarch64) |

On Windows, launch runneomacs.exe for the GUI without a console window. Installer shortcuts use this launcher. Use neomacs.exe from a terminal for -nw, --batch, redirected output, and shell exit status.

For terminal, batch, and Linux container deployments, the complete application is also published for amd64 and arm64 on evalexec/neomacs and ghcr.io/eval-exec/neomacs. See the Docker guide.

The Linux product links the system GStreamer runtime and provides video. Every Linux artifact carries it: the .deb and .rpm declare the dependency, and the AppImage bundles that closure, though codec plugin families still come from the host.

The .rpm is built inside an el9 container, so it installs on RHEL 9, Rocky, Alma and Fedora 43+ — a package built on Ubuntu cannot, because rpmbuild records the build host's ncurses and glibc symbol versions as requirements. See releasing-linux.md.

git clone https://github.com/eval-exec/neomacs && cd neomacs
Optional (recommended): repo dev shell with all dependencies
nix develop --accept-flake-config
Compiles Rust, bootstraps Elisp, generates the portable dump
cargo xtask fresh-build --release
./target/release/neomacs

Status

| Area | State | |------|-------| | 100% GNU Emacs compatibility (oracle test suites) | 🚧 ~95%, closing the last gaps | | JIT compilation + inline caching for Elisp | 🚧 working, profiling and improving | | zero pause GC | 🚧 maturing | | Elisp-hackable frontend — GPU shaders, surfaces | 🚧 early, expanding | | Rust Elisp runtime — evaluator, bytecode VM, portable dump | 🚧 refactoring, testing, improving | | GPU display + layout engine (replaces xdisp.c) | 🚧 early, improving | | Inline images, 4K video, WebKit browser | 🚧 works today, experimental, improving | | High-performance neo-term (GPU terminal) | 🚧 in development | | Cursor / scroll / buffer-switch animations | 🚧 polishing, catalog growing | | Performance | 🔬 profiling, benchmarking, tuning | | True multi-threaded Elisp | 🔬 designing, researching, experimental attempts | | TUI renderer (neomacs -nw) | 🚧 usable, polishing | | Cross-platform support | 🚧 Linux & macOS first; Windows awaiting testing; WASM, Android & iOS planned |

Architecture

Everything runs in Rust across two threads — the Emacs thread owns the Elisp runtime and editor state, the render thread owns the GPU.

Design principles, the full module map, and why Rust/wgpu: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

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❤️ Sponsoring ❤️

NEO Emacs is a long-term project that takes significant ongoing work to build, test, and maintain. If NEO Emacs is useful or exciting to you, please consider supporting its development on:

• ❤️ GitHub Sponsors ❤️ -- recommand
• 🪙 Crypto donations are also welcome — scan a QR code or copy an address:

BTC (Bitcoin)	Ethereum — ETH · USDC · any ERC-20
bc1p0y3fzffqrqw08k8nc2ge3dfj02hr22ku8nugnc04ek522gty9kjsyy8lgc	0xF5e8493b611F8D4c07850C2cC77b38dD632620F2

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Acknowledgments

Built with wgpu · winit · cosmic-text — cursor animations inspired by Neovide.

License

GNU General Public License v3.0 (same as Emacs)