turbo-golo

A Turbo C-style editor for Golo, written in Go.

Built on turbo-core, the library every Turbo editor shares. What is in this repository is the command, the profile that says this editor is for Golo, and the Golo scanner — about a thousand lines, comments and all. Everything else lives in the library.

A full-screen terminal IDE with the Borland furniture — a menu bar with hot keys, movable windows that cast shadows, modal dialogs, a clickable status bar — and the things a Golo editor needs: syntax colouring written against GoloScript's own lexer, loadable colour themes, completion and diagnostics from golo lsp, shell windows, per-project settings, a project tree, snippets, and the GoloScript toolchain a menu away.

 File  Edit  Search  Run  Code  Options  Window  Snippets  Golo  Help
╔═[x]═════════════════════════════ hello.golo ══════════════════════════════1═[■]╗
║ 1 module hello.World                                                          ▲║
║ 2                                                                             ▓║
║ 3 # Greet someone several times                                               ░║
║ 4 struct Greeting = { name, times }                                           ░║
║ 5                                                                             ░║
║ 6 function greet = |g| {                                                      ░║
║ 7   foreach i in range(1, g: times() + 1) {                                   ░║
║ 8     println("Hello, " + g: name() + "! (" + i + ")")                        ░║
║ 9   }                                                                         ▼║
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╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝
 F1 Describe  F2 Save  F3 Open  F6 Window  F7 Next  F10 Menu       1:1  LSP: ready

Getting started

make install

That builds the editor, puts it where your shell looks for commands, and reports what it found — the Go version it built with, where the binary went, whether that directory is on your PATH, and whether golo is installed. Then, from any directory of Golo scripts:

turbo-golo main.golo

To build without installing, make build leaves the binary in bin/turbo-golo. From the module proxy instead of a checkout: go install rickub.com/turbo-editors/turbo-golo@latest.

For completion and diagnostics, install GoloScript as well — the editor works without it, and says so on the status bar. The language server is the interpreter itself, in golo lsp mode, so there is nothing separate to install: a machine that can run Golo can complete Golo. Precompiled binaries are on the release page; the install guide covers them, building from source, and how to check the editor really found it.

The tutorial walks through a first session in about ten minutes, and demos/ holds three Golo programs to open in it — a small one, one with tests, and a tour of every construct the scanner colours.

Features

Every build knows what it is — turbo-golo -version and Help ▸ About name the version, the commit and the build date, stamped in by the linker from git describe rather than read from a constant somebody forgot to bump
Turbo Vision interface — menu bar with Alt-letter hot keys, overlapping movable and resizable windows, modal dialogs, mouse support throughout
Syntax colouring for nine languages — Golo by a hand-written scanner that follows GoloScript's lexer: # and ---- comments, strings carried to their closing quote wherever it is, """ multi-line strings, character literals, the L and F suffixes, the rule that keeps 1..3 an integer and a range, and names made of any Unicode letter or emoji. Plus TOML, YAML, Markdown, JavaScript, HTML, XML, Dockerfiles and shell scripts from turbo-core
Types by convention — a capitalised name is a struct, a union or a variant, because that is how Golo writes them; Some, None, Ok and Err are types here and not constants, because in Golo they are variants of ordinary unions from gololang.Errors
Themes in TOML, eleven embedded — Borland navy, dark grey, paper white, espresso, Catppuccin Frappé and Latte, cobalt, Darcula and IntelliJ Light, and a hueless monochrome in both polarities — and any number of your own, with inheritance between files and between style keys. Every shipped theme is held to its contrast by tests
Per-project settings in .turbo-golo/settings.toml — pin a theme, turn on automatic saving — created from a menu item, never by itself, and re-read on every save so a change takes effect without a restart
Completion, hover, go-to-definition, references, symbols and diagnostics from golo lsp, entirely optional. The server is the interpreter, looked for on PATH and in /usr/local/bin, where GoloScript's installer puts it. It does not answer type definitions, and the editor says so rather than pretending
Terminal windows — F8 opens a real shell in a window, with its own VT/ANSI emulator, scrollback and job control (Linux, macOS and Windows)
Project tree — F9 shows the project's files in a window; walk it with the arrows and press Enter to open one
Snippets — a Snippets menu built from .turbo-golo/snippets.toml, grouped into submenus and filtered by the file you are in; the chosen text is inserted at the cursor and re-indented to match
The GoloScript toolchain a menu away — Alt-G runs the script, the tests, the debugger, the REPL, golo new, gogolo build and wagolo build from .turbo-golo/tools.toml, each showing its output where the tool asked: a popup that fills in as it goes, a terminal window, or an editing window to search. Golo has no manifest, so six of the eight commands ask which file they are for before they run — and a tool naming a menu of its own gets that menu on the bar
Editing with word movement, block indent, a shared clipboard, and undo that merges a run of typing into one step
Faithful files — line endings and the trailing newline are preserved, and saving is atomic
Automatic saving, off by default, writing a short while after you stop typing

Commands

Command	What it does
`make install`	Build and install onto your `PATH`
`make build`	Compile into `bin/turbo-golo`
`make test`	Run the whole test suite
`make check`	`fmt`, `vet`, then the tests — what a commit should pass
`make run FILE=x.golo`	Build and start the editor on a file
`make help`	List every target

turbo-golo [-theme name] [-no-lsp] [file...]
turbo-golo -list-themes

Documentation

Full documentation in English and French, organised by the Diátaxis method:


Tutorial	Your first Golo program in Turbo Golo
How-to	install the editor · install GoloScript · run the tests · enable completion · write a theme · move around a file · ask about code · use a terminal · configure a project · browse a project · use snippets · run Golo commands · make a release
Reference	command line · keyboard · menus · theme format · terminal windows · project settings · project tree · languages · snippets · Golo tools · the version number
Explanation	architecture · design decisions · colouring and completion · terminal windows · project settings · project tree · snippets · Golo tools

The library's packages each carry their own README.md beside the code, in turbo-core.

Where the code is


`main.go`	flags, the terminal, the wiring
`internal/gololang`	the profile, the Golo scanner, the three starter files
`demos/`	three Golo programs to open in the editor; each runs under `golo`
everything else	turbo-core

The dependency graph is drawn in docs/diagrams/packages.drawio, checked against go list by diagram_test.go.

Design in one line

Two dependencies — tcell/v2 and BurntSushi/toml — and everything else from the standard library, including the scanner toolkit and the Language Server Protocol client. Both come through turbo-core; this repository adds none of its own. The design decisions page explains why.

Requirements

Go 1.26 or later to build it — the editor is written in Go even though it is an editor for Golo. A terminal with mouse reporting, which is all of them. GoloScript is optional, and is what completion, the error marks and the Golo menu's commands need.

Licence

See LICENSE.