Evcode:I built a terminal IDE in Rust that runs on 7MB of RAM — Evcode 1.0.0

Emil Poghosyan — Wed, 27 May 2026 08:36:14 +0000

I got tired of waiting for VS Code to load over SSH.

There was no grand vision behind this. Just a very specific frustration — spinning up a remote session, watching Electron slowly come alive, and wondering if there was a better way to just edit files fast.

So I built Evcode. Version 1.0.0 shipped this week.

What it is

A terminal IDE written in Rust. No GUI. No Electron. No configuration files you spend a weekend learning. You run it, it works.

Built with Ratatui + Crossterm. Idle memory usage is around 7–10MB.

cargo install evcode

What changed in 1.0.0

Earlier versions used a standard String buffer — fine for small files, but not scalable. In 1.0.0, that was replaced with a rope-based engine using ropey, a B-Tree structure where edits are O(log n). Now opening a 500k-line log file feels the same as opening a small config.

Alongside that, viewport virtualization was introduced — the renderer now processes only visible lines. File size no longer affects CPU usage in the same way.

Async LSP runs on a Tokio worker thread and communicates with the UI through mpsc channels. It took a few iterations to get right, but now the UI thread never blocks on LSP responses.

Ghost Snap

Alt+S creates an instant snapshot — first in RAM for speed, then saved to .evcode/snaps/ on disk for safety. Alt+D overlays the previous version on top of the current file. Alt+R restores it.

Yes, I know git exists. This is for that messy 10-minute window before a commit.

Try it

cargo install evcode

GitHub: https://github.com/poghdev/Evcode-ide
Site: https://products.eeive.com/evcode.html

If you run into issues — LSP problems, rendering quirks in certain terminals, anything — open an issue. The codebase is still small and response time is fast.

DEV Community: Emil Poghosyan

Evcode:I built a terminal IDE in Rust that runs on 7MB of RAM — Evcode 1.0.0