Development Tools¶

Alternative Editors¶

OmarOS ships with Neovim by default, but if you'd like something a bit more mainstream and familiar, you can run the OmarOS Menu (Super + Space) and see the options under Install > Editor. We have VSCode, Cursor, Zed, Sublime Text, Helix, Vim, and Emacs listed there. If you don't find what you're looking for, checkout Install > Package, and see if it isn't in an Arch package (and if not, try Install > AUR to check the AUR).

The original vi editor is also available out of the box. Run vi filename to edit a file in the terminal.

Theme matching is offered for VSCode, Cursor, VSCodium, and Helix.

You can set the system-wide default editor under Setup > Defaults > Editor.

Environment¶

OmarOS supports setting up a whole host of development environments through the Install > Development section of the OmarOS Menu (Super + Space). You'll of course find Ruby on Rails, but also all three major runtimes for JavaScript (Node.js, Bun, Deno), as well as popular PHP frameworks like Laravel and Symfony. Oh, and there's Go, Rust, Python, Java, Elixir (with Phoenix), .NET, OCaml, Zig, Clojure, and Scala too. It's a very broad selection!

The majority of these environments are managed by Mise. It's a tool that lets you install and run multiple versions of a programming language on the same machine. It's like rbenv or rvm for Ruby or virtualenv for Python, but it works for a bunch of different environments.

To install, say, Ruby, you'd run mise use -g ruby, which will both install Ruby and set it as the global default. Or, if your project has a .ruby-version file, you can just run mise i in the root of that project.

Preinstalled CLI tools¶

OmarOS makes a few tools, uv, ghui, hunk, and ori, available through mise's lazy installation. The first time you run one, mise installs it. Later runs reuse the installed version; they do not check for an update on every launch.

You can also inspect the defaults or install them ahead of time:

mise ls --current              # List the tools configured for this directory
mise install uv               # Install one tool now
mise install --include-lazy    # Install all configured tools, including lazy tools

Run omaros update to update installed tools with the rest of OmarOS. The mup alias updates mise-managed tools only. To add another tool to your own configuration, use mise use -g <tool>.

Python setup also installs uv through mise. Removing the Python development environment leaves uv available as an independent tool.

Using your own installation¶

mise's commands come before ~/.local/bin on PATH, so a tool you installed yourself, for example with its own installer, still runs mise's copy. Apps launched from the desktop also find mise's commands before system packages, so an app that runs uv gets mise's copy even if you installed uv with pacman, and mise installs that copy the first time. To use yours instead, disable mise's copy in ~/.config/mise/config.toml. For example, if you installed uv yourself:

[settings]
disable_tools = ["uv"]

If you already have a [settings] table, add the entry there; extend an existing disable_tools list rather than replacing it. Make sure your installation is on PATH. Use the mise tool name, which can differ from its command.

Removing and restoring defaults¶

Remove Preinstalls has mise skip OmarOS's tool declarations for your user, by adding them to ignored_config_paths in ~/.config/mise/miserc.toml. Restore Preinstalls removes that line again. Tools you declare yourself, in your own config or in a project's mise.toml, keep working either way. If you set up Python after removing the preinstalls, uv is added to your own config. Both apply only to your user; other users on the machine keep their own choice.

Docker¶

Docker hardly needs any introduction. It allows you to run isolated containers, and OmarOS installs everything needed to run it well, including Docker itself and Docker Compose.

By default your user is not in the docker group. That group is effectively passwordless root — anything in it can docker run -v /:/host and take over the machine — so a single rogue script or dependency running as you would otherwise be one command away from root. So on the command line you run Docker with sudo (sudo docker ps, sudo docker compose up), and the graphical tools that talk to the daemon — the Windows VM — ask for authorization when they need it. If you want the convenience of a groupless setup back and understand the tradeoff, enable it from Setup > Security > Sudoless Docker (or run omaros-setup-security-sudoless-docker), which adds you to the docker group after a warning; then plain docker and the d alias work without sudo again.

You can setup the common databases for local development in Docker using Install > Development > Docker DB in the OmarOS menu.

GitHub CLI¶

OmarOS doesn't preinstall GitHub CLI. If you want it, install it with mise use -g gh or Install > Package (github-cli), then run gh auth login.

For a terminal interface to pull requests, run ghui; mise installs it on first use. Lazygit is preinstalled for working with Git itself.