Sublime Text Build 4213(sublimetext.com) |
Sublime Text Build 4213(sublimetext.com) |
- Upgraded Python 3.8 to Python 3.14
- Python 3.3 is now disabled by default
By default, Sublime plugins now all run under the Python 3.14. The 3.8 plugin host was removed (Python 3.8 reached EOL in Oct 2024), and the 3.3 plugin host is deprecated, and will be removed in a future release.
This is great for plugin devs. They get improvements to syntax, performance, type hints, the standard library, etc, and they can depend on modern versions of Python packages. Many packages no longer receive updates for 3.8 (e.g. https://github.com/psf/requests), let alone 3.3, and many others simply don't run on these older python versions (e.g. https://github.com/xberg-io/tree-sitter-language-pack).
Like the plugin systems for Emacs/Neovim/VS Code (and unlike the sandboxed systems for e.g. Zed and Helix), Sublime's plugin API has low-level access to the editor, and the runtime has full OS access.
I think Sublime was smart to bet on Python for the plugin system. They released the plugin system in 2009, before Python was everywhere. The super flexible plugin API and the huge package ecosystem is a powerful combo.
If anyone is following along in the forums and understands the health of the team behind the product, could you give us a read on the prospective longterm health of the product? Most in my circle thing ST is dead or abandoned.
As for why specific issues aren't addressed, it's merely a prioritization thing. It's a large task, and I'm sure if you asked 100 people they'd all give you different answers for which "basic usability" thing needs to be addressed.
And whatever it does, it does better than Zed, debatably.
To this day I always install Sublime on my new machines, it's the perfect text editor for my needs: fast and snappy, buffers are persistent so I can use as a scratch pad without having to save files, can customise with plugins if needed, the command palette gives quite a bit of power user features.
I mostly use it as a scratch pad nowadays, like if I'm debugging something, collecting a bunch of text from different places to reference quickly, nothing too advanced (nor directly related to coding) and is still one of the most satisfying programs to use on my day-to-day. It's basically always open, just waiting for a new buffer.