Contents

Installation

Requirements

In its bid for minimalism, Textadept also needs very little to run. In fact, the only thing it needs is GTK+ >= 2.18 on Linux systems. GTK is already included in Windows and Mac OSX packages. Textadept also has its own version of Lua.

Notes:

Linux

Most Linux systems already have GTK+ installed. If not, it is probably available through your package manager. Otherwise, compile and install it from the GTK+ website.

Mac OSX

No requirements other than Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) or higher with an Intel CPU.

Windows

No requirements.

Download

Download Textadept from the project page. Select the appropriate package for your platform.

You can also download an official set of language-specific modules, but this is optional. The list of language modules in the package is contained here. Textadept includes C/C++ and Lua language modules by default.

Installation

Textadept is designed to be as easy as possible to install by any user. You do not need to have administrator privileges.

Linux

Unpack the archive anywhere.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it where you unpacked the Textadept archive. The modules will be contained in /path/to/textadept_VERSION/modules/.

Mac OSX

Unpack the archive and move Textadept.app to your user or system Applications directory like any other Mac OSX application. There is also a ta script for launching Textadept from the command line that you can put in your PATH, but this is optional.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it, right-click Textadept.app, select Show Package Contents, navigate to Contents/Resources/modules, and copy the unpacked modules there.

Windows

Unpack the archive anywhere.

If you downloaded the set of language-specific modules, unpack it where you unpacked the Textadept archive. The modules will be contained in textadept_VERSION\modules\.

Running

Linux

Run Textadept by running /path/to/textadept_VERSION/textadept from the terminal. You can also create a symlink to the executable in your PATH (e.g. /usr/bin) or make a GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc. button or menu launcher.

There is also a textadeptjit executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The textadept executable is recommended.

Problems

It is difficult to provide a single binary that runs on all Linux platforms since the versions of software installed vary widely from distribution to distribution. Because the Linux version of Textadept uses the version of GTK+ installed on your system, an error like: error while loading shared libraries: <lib>: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory may occur when trying to run the program.

The most common occurance of this error is for the libpng12 library on 64-bit (x86_64) Debian and Debian-based Linux distributions like Ubuntu because libpng12 has not been replaced in favor of the newer libpng14. If you are experiencing this error, simply rename textadept.lpng12 to textadept. The former has been compiled to use libpng12.

If the above situation did not apply to you, do not be alarmed. The solution is actually quite painless even though it requires recompiling Textadept. See the compiling page for more information.

Mac OSX

Run Textadept by double-clicking Textadept.app.

Textadept.app also contains an executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. You can enable it by setting a TEXTADEPTJIT environment variable or using export TEXTADEPTJIT=1 in the terminal. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The non-LuaJIT executable is recommended.

Environment Variables

By default, GUI apps like Textadept do not utilize environment variables such as PATH from your shell profile. Therefore, any modules that use programs contained in PATH (e.g. the progams in /usr/local/bin/) for run and compile commands will not be found. The solution is to follow these instructions to export whichever environment variables you need. At the very least, set PATH to be $PATH. You will have to logout and log back in for the changes to take effect.

Windows

Run Textadept by double-clicking textadept.exe. You can also create shortcuts to the executable in your Start Menu, Quick Launch toolbar, Desktop, etc.

There is also a textadeptjit.exe executable for running Textadept with LuaJIT. Please note there may be compatibility issues. The textadept.exe executable is recommended.

Single Instance

Textadept is a single-instance application on Linux, BSD, and Mac OSX. This means that after Textadept is opened, running textadept file.ext (ta file.ext on Mac OSX) from the command line or opening a file with Textadept from a file manager will open file.ext in the already open instance of Textadept. You can override this and open the file in a new instance by passing a -f or --force switch to Textadept: textadept -f file.ext (ta -f file.ext). When the force switch is not present, files will be opened in the original Textadept instance, regardless of how many instances are open.

Single instance is not supported on Windows.

Linux    Mac OSX    Win32