Can we use the zed command in a remote terminal to open a file in the current window?

[hujianxin]

like vscode does

[xJonathanLEI]

I wanted to request the zed command in remote terminal and searching has led me here. Yes, it should work like the code command and I think that's a very polished UX we should mimic. Btw I think this is the wrong discussion category.

For context, VS Code does it like so:

1. PATH Modification: When the remote extension host starts, it modifies the PATH in the terminal environment.
2. Shell Scripts: The remote-cli folder contains platform-specific shell scripts that act as the code command.
3. IPC Setup: When creating a terminal, VSCode sets up an IPC pipe and passes it via environment variable.
4. CLI Server: A CLI server is created that listens on this IPC pipe for commands (src/vs/workbench/api/node/extHostCLIServer.ts).

When you run code . in the terminal:

1. The shell script runs the server CLI
2. The CLI connects to the IPC pipe and sends commands
3. The server processes the command and opens files/folders in VSCode

Zed can take a similar approach, but instead of platform-specific shell scripts (code.sh, code.cmd, ...), when establishing a remote connection we already know the remote OS & arch, so we might as well just ship that CLI as binary.

Even better, we can make remote_server itself somehow support a CLI mode. So we can modify the remote terminal to call the remote_server binary in CLI mode, and then it would communicate with the server process to perform certain actions.

Would be nice if someone from Zed can shed some lights on this.

[notpeter]

I've wanted to support this with remote sessions for a while. Currently on local sessions, invoking the zed cli binary will connect to a local socket which allows "telling" the running zed process to open a given file or starts up a new zed if one is not running.

With Zed running on your laptop, we restrict to only a single process running (one process, one socket, many workspaces) but on the remote it much more complicated (many processes, no sockets, many workspaces). There are definitely ways this could be supported, for example, Zed could inject an alias into Zed Terminal sessions that makes sure that the zed command under the hood connects the appropriate zed-remote-server process and define some method for messaging passing to occur.

Definitely something we'd like to support in the future, but it definitely needs some infrastructure work to get it all plumbed correctly.

[xJonathanLEI]

I think VS Code pretty much has this figured out (see my comment above). Each workspace editor would spawn a CLI server listening to a socket on the remote machine; then the code command would communicate with that socket (by injecting PATH to make the command available and another env var pointing to the socket path). This way it's automatically ensured that we're communicating with the right process, since the socket itself is already manged by the workspace session itself.

Here the workspace editor acts as a bridge between the CLI and the actual remote server. I think we can replicate this pattern. We can also make it such that the remote_server binary can run in a "CLI mode" when invoked through a symlink. This allows us to keep shipping only one binary like we do now. It also avoids issues like CLI and server version mismatches.

WDYT?

[hujianxin]

I look forward to you delivering the most perfect solution. The remote feature is the one I use the most and the most powerful editor function. I hope to be able to use Zed as soon as possible. Thanks a lot.

[garymm]

Should we convert this to an issue so people can vote on it?

[lamdor]

Could ANSI escape sequences or OSC52 / clipboard be used here? Like if we could have a simple zed binary somehow on the path when in a terminal and then a hook in the alacritty to watch for a zed URL pattern? Just an idea

[m-vz]

I've got some tasks i use a lot that rely on the zed cli and thus don't work in remote workspaces. This feature would be immensely useful!

[gerardo-navarro]

I can totally support this. I am also working with a remote session and it would be quite handy to use zed as the editor for git commit messages, as described in https://zed.dev/docs/git#git-cli-configuration . This is currently not possible because zed command is not available for a remote terminal session.

[KorigamiK]

This is definitely a great feature. I don't know if we have something like shell integration for zed or something. This would allow us to introduce command line aliases instead of pushing another new binary for the remote system. we could use the socket to send open and navigate commands from the terminal to the remote zed session

[SeanWiig]

One use case is being able to run this "netrw"-like task on a remote machine to open a new pane on local GUI:
#9067
As far as I can tell, this isn't possible right now.