Zed for Windows Development Update: Progress on Native Windows Port
By
janjones
9mo ago· 7 min readenNews
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Summary
The Zed development team provides an update on the Windows port of their code editor, explaining that what started as a one-person project has expanded to a team of four engineers working full-time for the past 6 weeks. The article details technical challenges including rendering backend issues with Vulkan on Windows, GPU driver compatibility problems, and the decision to implement a new DirectX-based rendering system. The team is making significant progress but acknowledges the complexity of creating a native Windows experience.
Key quotes
· 4 pulledThe Windows port started as a one-person project, but for the past 6 weeks, we've had a group of four engineers focused on Windows full-time.
When we first got Zed running on Windows, we used the same rendering backend we use on Linux, which is based on Vulkan graphics API.
We got reports from users that Zed didn't run on their machine because their GPU drivers didn't support the version of Vulkan we were using.
We're implementing a new rendering backend for Windows based on DirectX, which is the native graphics API for Windows.
From the Zed Blog: An update on what the Zed for Windows team has been doing in July and August.
