Atom (text editor)

Free and open-source text and source code editor

Atom

Atom with an open project on Windows 10

Developer(s)| GitHub (subsidiary of Microsoft)[1]
Initial release| February 26, 2014; 9 years ago (2014-02-26)[2]
Final release|

1.63.1[3] / 23 November 2022

Preview release|

1.61.0-beta0[4] / 8 March 2022

Repository|

* github.com/atom/atom

Written in| CoffeeScript, JavaScript, Less, HTML (front-end/UI)
Operating system| macOS 10.9 or later, Windows 7 and later, and Linux[5]
Size| 87–180 MB
Available in| English
Type| Source code editor
License| MIT License (free software)[6][7]
Website| atom.io

Atom was a free and open-source text and source code editor for macOS, Linux, and Windows with support for plug-ins written in JavaScript, and embedded Git Control. Developed by GitHub, Atom was released on June 25, 2015.[8]

Most of the extending packages have free software licenses and are community-built and maintained.[citation needed]

On June 8, 2022, GitHub announced that Atom's end-of-life would occur on December 15 of that year, "in order to prioritize technologies that enable the future of software development", specifically its GitHub Codespaces and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code.[9][10]

## Features[edit]

Atom was a "hackable" text editor, which means it was customizable using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.[11]

Atom was a desktop application built using web technologies.[12] It was based on the Electron framework, which was developed for that purpose, and hence was formerly called Atom Shell.[13] Electron is a framework that enables cross-platform desktop applications using Chromium and Node.js.[14][15]

Atom was initially written in CoffeeScript and Less, but much of it has been converted to JavaScript.[16]

Atom uses Tree-sitter to provide syntax highlighting for multiple programming languages and file formats.[17]

### Packages[edit]

Like most other configurable text editors, Atom enabled users to install third-party packages and themes to customize the features and looks of the editor. Packages can be installed, managed and published via Atom's package manager apm. All types of packages, including but not limited to: Syntactic highlighting support for languages other than the default, debuggers, etc. can be installed via apm.[citation needed]

## History[edit]

Atom was developed by GitHub as a text editor using the Electron Framework (originally called Atom Shell), a framework designed as the base for Atom.

Between May 2015 and December 2018,[18] Facebook developed Nuclide[19] and Atom IDE projects to turn Atom into an integrated development environment (IDE).[20][21][22][23]

On June 8, 2022, GitHub announced shutdown of Atom development and archival of all development repositories of Atom by December 15, 2022.[9]

Atom's founder, Nathan Sobo, has announced that he is building the "spiritual successor" to Atom, titled Zed.[24][25][26] Unlike Atom, Zed will be written in Rust and will not be using the Electron framework.[27]

On January 30, 2023, GitHub announced a breach which exposed "a set of encrypted code signing certificates" some of which were used to sign Atom releases. GitHub advised users to downgrade to earlier version of Atom signed with a different key.[28]

Following Atom's end-of-life, development continued on a community fork named Pulsar.[29]

## License[edit]

Initially, extension packages for Atom and anything not part of Atom's core were released under an open-source license. On May 6, 2014, the rest of Atom, including the core application, its package manager, as well as its desktop framework Electron, were released as free and open-source software under the MIT License.[30]

## Privacy concerns[edit]

There was initially concern and discussion about two opt-out packages that report various data to external servers.[31][32][33][34][35] However, those packages became opt-in with a verbose dialog during the initial launch:[36]

* Metrics package: Prior to version 1.31.0, Atom reported usage information via Google Analytics, including a unique UUID v4 random identifier.[37] Since version 1.31.0, usage data was sent to GitHub's analytics pipeline directly.[38][39] Authors stated that they used analytics data to measure the performance and determine the most-used functions.[5] This feature could be disabled by the user by opening the Settings View, searching for the metrics package, and disabling it.[37]
* Exception-reporting package: Reported uncaught Atom exceptions to www.bugsnag.com.[40]

## See also[edit]

* Free and open-source software portal

* List of text editors
* Comparison of text editors § Programming features
* Comparison of HTML editors
* List of formerly proprietary software

## References[edit]

1. ^ "Microsoft's 'future CEO of GitHub' speaks out on Atom, keeping GitHub independent and more". ZDNet. Retrieved 21 June 2020.
2. ^ "Introducing Atom". Atom. 26 February 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
3. ^ "Release 1.63.1". 23 November 2022. Retrieved 7 December 2022.
4. ^ "Release 1.61.0-beta0". 8 March 2022. Retrieved 16 June 2022.
5. ^ a b "FAQ". Atom. Retrieved 12 June 2020.
6. ^ Henry, Alan (8 May 2014). "Atom, the Text Editor from GitHub, Goes Free and Open-Source". Lifehacker.
7. ^ Lardinois, Frederic (6 May 2014). "GitHub Open Sources Its Atom Text Editor". TechCrunch.
8. ^ Ogle, Ben (25 June 2015). "Atom 1.0". blog.atom.io. Retrieved 25 June 2015.
9. ^ a b "Sunsetting Atom". The GitHub Blog. 2022-06-08. Retrieved 2022-06-09.
10. ^ Wiggers, Kyle (8 June 2022). "GitHub sunsets Atom, the software dev environment it launched in 2011". TechCrunch. Archived from the original on 9 June 2022. Retrieved 9 June 2022. "GitHub today announced that it will sunset Atom"
11. ^ "Getting started with Atom". Codecademy. Archived from the original on 2019-10-07. Retrieved 2019-10-07.
12. ^ "Getting Started: Why Atom". Atom project. Retrieved 17 August 2015. "[...] we didn't build Atom as a traditional web application. Instead, Atom was a specialized variant of Chromium designed to be a text editor rather than a web browser. Every Atom window is essentially a locally-rendered web page."
13. ^ "Atom Shell is now Electron". Atom. Archived from the original on 2017-07-08. Retrieved 2017-07-15.
14. ^ "Atom GitHub Page". GitHub. Retrieved 27 August 2015.
15. ^ "Electron GitHub Page". GitHub. Retrieved 14 February 2016.
16. ^ "Hacking Atom: Tools of the Trade". Retrieved 22 February 2017.
17. ^ Brunsfeld, Max (2018-10-31). "Atom understands your code better than ever before". The GitHub Blog. Retrieved 2023-09-10.
18. ^ "Facebook retires Nuclide extension". Atom Blog. 12 December 2018. Retrieved 2019-01-12.
19. ^ "Retiring the Nuclide Open Source Project". Nuclide. Retrieved 2021-04-19.
20. ^ "Atom IDE". Atom IDE. Retrieved 2018-01-26.
21. ^ "Nuclide". Nuclide. Retrieved 2016-10-12.
22. ^ "Juno, the Interactive Development Environment". Juno. Retrieved 2016-10-12.
23. ^ "PlatformIO IDE: The next-generation integrated development environment for IoT". PlatformIO. Archived from the original on 2016-10-13. Retrieved 2016-10-12.
24. ^ Sobo, Nathan. "Sunsetting Atom". Hacker News. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
25. ^ Nathan Sobo [@nathansobo] (June 8, 2022). "As Atom's sun sets, Zed's sun is rising. We're not done here" (Tweet) - via Twitter.
26. ^ Eastman, David (2023-04-08). "Zed: A New Multiplayer Code Editor from the Creators of Atom". The New Stack. Retrieved 2023-07-07.
27. ^ "Built in Rust". Zed – A lightning fast, collaborative code editor. Retrieved 21 June 2022.
28. ^ Goodin, Dan (2023-01-30). "GitHub says hackers cloned code-signing certificates in breached repository". Ars Technica. Retrieved 2023-03-02.
29. ^ "Pulsar: A Community-Led Open Source Code Editor to Continue the Legacy of Atom". It's FOSS News. 2022-12-15. Retrieved 2023-09-14.
30. ^ "Atom Is Now Open Source". Atom. 6 May 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2015.
31. ^ "Have metrics disabled by default, or completely removed". GitHub. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
32. ^ "Collecting Metrics in Atom Core". Atom. Archived from the original on 2 March 2016. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
33. ^ "Communicate plan on how to modify metrics to be opt-in now that 1.0 is released". GitHub Atom. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
34. ^ "should be disableable during install". Atom. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
35. ^ "Should be disabled by default". Atom. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
36. ^ "Send telemetry only with consent by damieng · Pull Request #66 · atom/metrics". GitHub.
37. ^ a b "atom/metrics: A package to collect metrics". GitHub. Retrieved 6 November 2015.
38. ^ "atom/atom". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
39. ^ "RIP Google Analytics by annthurium · Pull Request #100 · atom/metrics". GitHub. Retrieved 2018-10-13.
40. ^ "exception-reporting". Atom. Retrieved 3 February 2016.

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