Code editor: nano

Nano is an easy to use command line text editor for Unix and Linux operating systems. Let’s show the power of nano by working with a Quarkus example application and doing some live coding!

Installing nano

To get started with the nano editor, we simply need to install nano using dnf.

dnf install -y nano

Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Last metadata expiration check: 2:15:10 ago on Tue 04 Oct 2022 01:21:12 AM UTC.
Dependencies resolved.
========================================================================================================
 Package          Architecture       Version                  Repository                           Size
========================================================================================================
Installing:
 nano             x86_64             2.9.8-1.el8              rhel-8-baseos-rhui-rpms             580 k
...
Complete!

Installing quarkus

Next, let’s also install Quarkus, and any other dependencies so we can create a template "Getting Started" application. Based off of the Get Started instructions, we can use the following command to install the Quarkus CLI.

curl -Ls https://sh.jbang.dev | bash -s - trust add https://repo1.maven.org/maven2/io/quarkus/quarkus-cli/
curl -Ls https://sh.jbang.dev | bash -s - app install --fresh --force quarkus@quarkusio

Downloading JBang...
Installing JBang...
Downloading JDK 11. Be patient, this can take several minutes...
...
[jbang] Setting up JBang environment...
Please start a new Shell for changes to take effect

Getting started with nano

First, let’s return to tmux to have a few windows to work with. Then, let’s create the example application so we have code to edit with nano.

tmux
quarkus create && cd code-with-quarkus

Creating an app (default project type, see --help).
Looking for the newly published extensions in registry.quarkus.io
...
[SUCCESS] ✅  quarkus project has been successfully generated in:
--> /home/ec2-user/code-with-quarkus

Now, let’s run the application using quarkus dev, and open a new pane using tmux in order to check that the application is running.

quarkus dev
Ctrl-b %
curl -s localhost:8080/hello

Creating an app (default project type, see --help).
Looking for the newly published extensions in registry.quarkus.io
...
[SUCCESS] ✅  quarkus project has been successfully generated in:
--> /home/ec2-user/code-with-quarkus

And a result from the curl command as follows.

Hello from RESTEasy Reactive

Let’s use nano to change our code on the fly, and modify the RESTful endpoint. Creating one more pane, let’s open up the GreetingResource.java file using nano and change "Hello from RESTEasy Reactive" to "hello".

Ctrl-b "
nano code-with-quarkus/src/main/java/org/acme/GreetingResource.java

Now, the Quarkus application will automatically refresh, and upon a new curl command, you’ll notice the result has updated.

curl -s localhost:8080/hello

hello

There are plenty of more shortcuts you can use with nano to really utilize the full power of the editor, and you can learn more using this official shortcuts guide.