Kakoune + Nushell

Help
1

Hey gang, I’m trying to get some minor highlighting support for Nushell in Kakoune, and I’m getting nothing. I have the following for a file nu.kak in my $KAK_CONFIG/rc/filetypes:

# === Nushell filetype support for Kakoune ===

provide-module nu %@

# --- Highlighters (region-based) ---
add-highlighter shared/nu regions

# Code region (default)
add-highlighter shared/nu/code default-region group

# Interpolated double-quoted strings: $"..."
add-highlighter shared/nu/interp_double_string region '\$"' '"' fill string
# Interpolated single-quoted strings: $'...'
add-highlighter shared/nu/interp_single_string region "\\$'" "'" fill string

# Regular double-quoted strings
add-highlighter shared/nu/double_string region '"'   (?<!\\)(?:\\\\)*" fill string
# Regular single-quoted strings
add-highlighter shared/nu/single_string region "'"   (?<!\\)(?:\\\\)*' fill string

# Comments
add-highlighter shared/nu/comment region '#' $ fill comment

add-highlighter shared/nu/code/keyword regex '\b(def|let|if|else|for|while|match|return|break|continue|try|catch|module|export|use|source|mut|const|true|false|nothing|int|float|bool|str|list|record|table|closure|binary|glob|cell-path)\b' 0:keyword
add-highlighter shared/nu/code/value regex '\b([0-9]+)\b' 0:value
# add more eventually

@

# --- Filetype detection and hook ---
hook global BufCreate .*\.nu$ %{
  set-option buffer filetype nu
}

hook global WinSetOption filetype=nu %{
    set-option window tabstop 2
    set-option window indentwidth 2

    # --- Lint ---
    set-option window lintcmd 'sleep 0.2; nu-check $kak_buffile'
    hook window -group lint BufWritePost .* lint
    hook -once window WinSetOption filetype=.* %{
        unset-option window lintcmd
    }

    # Optionally enable rainbow parentheses if you use that plugin
    # rainbow-enable-window
} 

hook -group nu-highlight global WinSetOption filetype=nu %{
    add-highlighter window/nu ref nu
    hook -once -always window WinSetOption filetype=.* %{ remove-highlighter window/nu }
}

But no highlighting ever gets applied.
I also get nothing from kak-tree-sitter with the following in my configuration:

# nu
[grammar.nu.source.git ]
url = "https://github.com/nushell/tree-sitter-nu"
pin = "358c4f509eb97f0148bbd25ad36acc729819b9c1"

[language.nu]
aliases = [ "nu", "nushell" ]

[language.nu.queries.source.git]
url = "https://github.com/helix-editor/helix"
pin = "7275b7f85014aad7e15d4987ec4f2249572eecfb"

So I don’t quite know what is going wrong where.

Kakoune version: Kakoune 2025.06.03-41-gcfa40b71
OS: MacOS
Installation method: brew install kakoune --HEAD

2

Your Kakoune highlighter does provide-module nu, providing a string that will be evaluated when required, but nothing ever does require-module nu.

If you add require-module nu (which creates the shared/nu highlighters) just before you try to use the shared highlighters with add-highlighter window/nu ref nu then you should get highlighting.

1 Like
3

Ah, thank you, Screwtapello! Now to add all of regexes for basic highlighting before I try and figure out how to get kakoune-lsp and kak-tree-sitter working for NuShell.

1 Like