Linux light editor on MacOs

In this manual I will explain how to run some lightweight linux editor on MacOS (in my case it is MacOS Big Sur).

Why? most of the text editors for MacOS are quite slow, and sometimes I just want to quickly edit some text or code file with gui application.

Yes, there are alternatives: VSCode/VSCodium, Geany.

But, I wanted also to learn a bit and I like pluma text editor which is not available for MacOS natively.

Prerequisities

• Install Docker Destop for Mac
• Install Homebrew
• Install XQuartz for Mac (X11 server)
• Enable the option Allow connections from network clients in XQuartz settings
• Install sockat brew install socat - it will be needed to forward connections to the XQuarz X11 server.

Create a docker image and pluma startup script

• Create a Dockerfile

FROM debian:buster

RUN echo "building debian-editor"

RUN apt-get update
RUN apt-get -y install pluma

COPY run-editor.sh /run-editor.sh
RUN chmod 755 /run-editor.sh

ENTRYPOINT [ "/run-editor.sh" ]

• Create run-editor.sh script

#!/bin/bash 

/usr/bin/pluma "$@"

• Build docker image

docker build -t debian-editor .

• Create a script to start this conatiner based pluma editor

#!/bin/bash

FILE=$1
OPEN_FILE=""

if [[ -z $FILE ]]; then 
    OPEN_FILE=""
else 
    OPEN_FILE="/tmp/$FILE"
fi 

mkdir -p ~/docker-home/pid_files/
PID_FILES=~/docker-home/pid_files/

TIME_ID=$(gdate +%s.%N)

SOCAT_STARTED=0
if [ -e ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid ]; then 
    echo "socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\" is already running in the background, with PID: $(cat ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid )"
    SOCAT_STARTED=0

else 
    socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\"  & 
    socat_PID=$(echo $!)
    echo "$socat_PID" > ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid
    echo "socat TCP-LISTEN:6000,reuseaddr,fork UNIX-CLIENT:\"$DISPLAY\" is running in the background, with PID: $socat_PID"
    SOCAT_STARTED=1
fi 

pluma_instance_ID=${TIME_ID}
echo "$pluma_instance_ID" > ${PID_FILES}/pluma_instance_ID_${TIME_ID}.txt

docker run -it --rm -e DISPLAY=host.docker.internal:0  -v `pwd`:/tmp/ debian-editor $OPEN_FILE

cat ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid
ps aux |grep socat 

how_many_instances=$(ls ${PID_FILES}/pluma_instance_ID*.txt | wc -l |xargs )

echo "how_many_instances=$how_many_instances"

if [ $how_many_instances -eq 1 ]; then 
    # killing socat only if there is no more running pluma instances, 
    # this is the only one
    echo "killing $(cat ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid )"
    kill -s TERM $(cat ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid )
    ps aux |grep socat 

    rm ${PID_FILES}/socat_PID.pid
else 
  echo "there are other running pluma instances"    
  ls ${PID_FILES}/pluma_instance_ID*.txt

fi 
rm ${PID_FILES}/pluma_instance_ID_${TIME_ID}.txt
echo "done"

• Open any file on your MacOS system by just typing pluma filepath in the terminal.