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https://github.com/ably-labs/vim-mqtt-livecode

Ably innovation day project to produce a POC that uses Ably network as a VIM livecode transport
https://github.com/ably-labs/vim-mqtt-livecode

ably livecoding mqtt vim

Last synced: 14 days ago
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Ably innovation day project to produce a POC that uses Ably network as a VIM livecode transport

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README 

        
# Ably Labs Template Repo



![](assets/github-1280-640.jpg)



## Description



Ably innovation day project to produce a POC that uses Ably network as a VIM livecode transport



VIM is a text editor with a particular user base. The program has been around for a long time and people who use VIM love it. On the VIM.org website it is interesting to note that the [vote results](https://www.vim.org/sponsor/vote_results.php) places collaborative editing as one of the highest ranked requests.



> No. 6 - add collaborative editing: changes made to a buffer show up in another Vim in a second



There are a number of VIM plugin implementations that address collaboration on a shared buffer, and this project draws from that inspiration. Of the plugins we looked at during the hackathon they, independent of the language, have a common denominator. They all reach for a websocket server as the vechile to transport the messages.



However there is a drawback by using that method. The Web socket server needs to run in some DMZ on the internet, or via proxy service like nGrok, which exposes a local-host server on the internet. This is required because that is how the collaborators connect each other.



Since we all work at Ably we know that using our network mitigates this necessity. The Ably Realtime network is already a public infrastructure. In addition to this we wanted to use the light weight MQTT protocol to function as the message carrier.



![](./assets/summary-illustration.svg)



## Innovation day conclusion



(set up what live coding is for non-tech heads - multiple users can congregate and edit source code simultaneously, like Google docs does, except instead of google docs the users would use VIM - the text editor extraordinaire!)



At our initial meeting we looked at some existing vim plugin projects and how they do it, and decided to approach the problem from a unique angle.



Where all of the projects used Websockts to exchange messages between the users, we want to use MQTT, for two reasons. Typically the libraries have a very small foot print, since they are often used in IoT devices, and because Ably has an MQTT endpoint.



We tested MQTT in nvim and it worked with little effort, so our intention at the offset was to use that as the message carriers. Which would set our project apart from the other similar project that have done a collaborative buffer sharing.



Then we tried to implement that in the existing plug in and where unable to get it threading. We couldn't run the MQTT client on the main thread because they use a different event-loop concurrency frameworks. This was a blocker for this approach with so little time on the clock.



So we decided to return to the Web-socket approach, with the intention to connect to Ably that way and discovered that their client is a hand-rolled TCP implementation of Web-socket using LUA. Which mean there was not "easy" way to replace it with Ably.



We tried a few other hacks and came to the conclusion that our objective is a achievable, but would require much more development time.



We would like to propose that hackathons/innovation day projects consider a full week. In our case, the first 2 days where investigation, and served to expose the problem but loft not much time to create a suitable solution.



## Building & running locally



- First you need to add `ABLY_API_KEY_LIVECODE` to your environment, to get a key [sign up for FREE account](https://ably.com/sign-up)



### Prerequisites



1. [Sign up](https://ably.com/signup) or [log in](https://ably.com/login) to ably.com, and [create a new app and copy the API key](https://faqs.ably.com/setting-up-and-managing-api-keys).

2. Install X

3. Install Y



### Building the project



// Add step by step instructions for building & running locally.



## Deploying to the cloud



// Add step by step instructions for deployment. Refer to the GitHub workflow where possible.



## Contributing



We have a [contributing guide](CONTRIBUTING.md) that explains how to contribute to this repository.



## More info



// Add links to related blog, video, personal twitter handle.



- [Ably on Twitter](https://twitter.com/ablyrealtime)

- [Ably SDKs](https://github.com/ably/)

- [Ably.com](https://ably.com)

- [Sign up for FREE account](https://ably.com/sign-up)



![](./assets/ably-logo.svg)